


Did you know?

by Fluffifullness



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Dark, Durarara!! Kink Meme, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Izuo - Freeform, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, POV Alternating, Psychology, Rape, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:00:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He accepted something that was hesitantly offered to him, and he accepted it knowing full well that he’d been living for far too long with the curse of his strength – long enough by then that he depended upon it. He’d been aware of the possible consequences of losing it, and Shinra had made sure to remind him of that.</p><p>It had come as anything but a surprise when he’d had no choice but to quit his job as Tom-san’s bodyguard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The original request from the kink meme is, as always, [here](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/6253.html?thread=22311533#t22311533). Some people may have a problem with the "Magical Healing Cock" tag, but do try to give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. ;)

The bar is busy tonight, and Shizuo’s sure he’ll be working overtime.

Of course, the number of costumers never actually matters much; the owner always has a thing or two for Shizuo to do after hours regardless. Sometimes it’s just one quick fuck, slap of skin on skin and the pain that lingers beyond that. Other times it’s a little more, the weight of another man’s cock in the blonde’s mouth and desperation fighting nausea. Then a longer, slower, far more painful fuck – _fuck_ , because what the hell else can Shizuo call it when he can’t fight back with words or strength, when it doesn’t feel good according to any definition Shizuo’s ever known?

The drug was Shinra’s idea, and so Shizuo could probably conclude that he has the doctor to thank for all this.

He could blame him.

He doesn’t, though, and that’s because he wasn’t simply strung along by Shinra’s desires. He accepted something that was hesitantly offered to him, and he accepted it knowing full well that he’d been living for far too long with the curse of his strength – long enough by then that he depended upon it. He’d been aware of the possible consequences of losing it, and Shinra had made sure to remind him of that.

It had come as anything but a surprise when he’d had no choice but to quit his job as Tom-san’s bodyguard.

He knows now as he did then that running away was cowardly. It’s made him weak in more ways than one, and Shizuo’s not about to blame anyone but himself for the consequences.

And it isn’t as if he didn’t resist at first. He got mad, shouted and struggled and tried to tear himself away from the boss’s hands on his wrists, his fingers working at his belt and the zipper beneath it. He tried to rely on his strength, and for that he’d been beaten pretty brutally.

 

_“Shizuo-kun…?! What on earth happened to you – weren’t you supposed to be working today?”_

_Shizuo grins, feeling dried blood tug at the skin of his cheeks as he does so. “Yeah. Ran into some guys on my way back.” He knows he probably smells pretty strongly of booze – just another symptom of his beating, the crash of glass hitting the top of his head, and his hair and shoulders are still slightly wet despite the long walk back to Shinra’s apartment._

_“Were you… drinking?” The doctor looks more than just concerned. There’s also the tension of almost-but-not-quite knowing what happened. The guilt of imagining that he’s partially responsible._

_Shizuo doesn’t miss a beat. “Spilled some.”_

 

His face is always left alone, of course, because – as he soon discovered – what once seemed to be a reasonably respectable bar is actually the furthest thing from that. His looks attract unscrupulous customers who can do as they please with him for a small fee – money he never sees, himself.

Licking, biting, orders he can’t but follow, and the marks don’t ever really have time to fade. There’s this constant pain in his back and chest and head. It puts him in an awful mood, but anger is just as beyond his control now as everything else. It’s so beyond his control that he can’t even act on it most of the time.

“Heiwajima-kun, I presume?”

The blonde glances up from the glass he’s been absentmindedly cleaning. The speaker is a younger man – in his mid to late thirties, maybe, and that’s young enough to placate Shizuo somewhat. He’s wearing a crooked grin and a rumpled suit. His breath reeks of alcohol already, and Shizuo guesses that his expression is supposed to be flirtatious. It strikes Shizuo as nothing more or less than creepy, though, and his skin crawls in anticipation of what’s to come.

He takes his time answering. “…Yeah.”

The guy’s obviously not looking for another round of beer.

“Why don’t you and I,” the man offers as his grin turns toothy and yellow and downright lecherous, “head on over to that cozy little back room?”

If Shizuo knew what an oxymoron was, he’d definitely tag the man’s words as such. He doesn’t, though, and his mind goes instantly blank as he sets the glass down on the counter, as he rounds it and lets himself be led away with nothing more than a brisk nod at his older coworker.

“Have fun, you two,” the other bartender calls, and Shizuo nods wordlessly once more.

 

_“Hey,” Shizuo murmurs. His words are meant for Celty but directed at the lengthening shadows before him. The park bench is cold and hard beneath him, his finger and thumb grasping a burning cigarette as if his life depends on it. “Why do you think people kill themselves?”_

_Celty’s fingers hover over the keypad of her PDA for a long while._

_[It’s a mistake.]_

_Shizuo grins emptily. “Yeah. Guess it is.”_

_He’d never do it, of course. He may not be enjoying life now, and maybe he’s not stupid enough to believe that it’ll get better soon, but suicide is just another kind of running away. He’s always hated it, the concept of it and the people who leave others alone and guilty and the society that makes them think there’s no other way._

_He can’t help wondering about it despite that._

_Celty watches him in perfect silence for a moment before raising the small screen again._

_[There’s always a bright side.]_

_She knows, of course, and Shizuo isn’t trying hard to hide it from her._

_“Yeah – yeah, of course there is.”_

The man demands first and foremost that Shizuo not stay silent. His eyes glint as the blonde tugs his belt off and climbs out of his pants. They’re practically stewing in unabashed lust as his boxers and shirts follow, as Shizuo’s cock jerks in response to every slight motion. The bartender waits quietly – eyes averted, cheeks stained red with shame – and he can’t help jumping as the stranger’s hand closes on his swaying member.

“Take mine off, too.”

Shizuo does – fingers shaking, teeth scraping his lower lip to keep his composure somehow in place – and this is usually how it is. Behind closed doors, these people don’t give the slightest damn about how they look to others. They don’t care that they’re cruel and cold and demanding with a naked bluntness that goes beyond simple ugliness.

They don’t care about Shizuo.

He’s not surprised, then, when the man fists his fingers in dyed-blonde hair hard enough that it hurts – when he brings Shizuo’s head close to his cock and demands, “Suck it” – the pain and the trying to pull away because it’s all he can do to maintain some semblance of self-respect.

He gives up quickly, and there’s saliva running past his chin before he can even begin to work at the sticky heat in his mouth, tongue slipping back and forth as the obstruction twitches and stiffens and the other man shoves his way deeper and deeper.

Shizuo moans and breathes hard and knows just how pathetic he sounds, how like a cheap whore. He pretends to like it anyway, though, pretends that he wouldn't rather be anywhere but here.

 

_Shizuo wakes up breathing hard, air catching in his throat and mingling with little unwilling grunts and whimpers. His hair is covered in blood again, and he’s staring up at the round, sweaty face of his boss. A few wayward wrinkles stand out here and there – many of those thanks to the unrepentant grin splitting the man’s face like a crack in a dilapidated sidewalk – and his breath reeks of poor hygiene and cheap beer as it hits Shizuo’s face at uneven intervals._

_“Stay still, now,” the man demands, and Shizuo responds by trying desperately to push him away._

_He’s rewarded with a resounding blow to his unguarded stomach. Every molecule of oxygen seems to leave him at once, and his abuser takes the opportunity to shove his way past the blonde’s too-tight entrance. Shizuo’s desperate stabs at drawing air into his lungs turn panicked as the first thrust strikes the ultra-sensitive bundle of nerves within. His back arches and his cock throbs so that it’s all he can do not to reach up and coax it to full hardness himself._

_He’s disgusting. This is disgusting. It’s not a turn-on, it’s not meant to feel good, and Shizuo is messed up for feeling the way he does – in the very pit of his stomach, in the back corner of his mind that isn’t blinded by rage and humiliation._

_“S-stop,” he finally manages, but by that time there’s little to no point. His boss’s fingernails are leaving bloody crescents on the skin of his thighs, his legs are spread wide and draped over the older man’s shoulders like a twisted scarf, and he’s being slammed into with more force than he can even remotely handle._

_Face flushed and muscles coiled, he comes with a reluctant moan – and his boss just keeps hammering his way deeper and deeper, bruising impacts that cease to feel like anything more than a dull thrum of pain and humiliation._

 

Back behind the counter with a fresh glass and cloth in his hands, Shizuo sighs as he lets his fingers graze the wood of the bar’s surface. It’s permanently sticky, stained and scored by years of violent customers and shot glasses slid back and forth. It’s dark in some places, light in others, old and worn and probably long overdue to be replaced.

He closes his eyes and lets himself imagine how it would look anywhere but here – still a little worse for wear, yeah, still scarred and mostly used up, but he wants to believe that it’s only defined by a temporary condition. A bad environment, ugly and corrupt.

He decides after many failed renditions, though, that it doesn’t really matter where the fixture goes. It’ll still smell of smoke, and the legacy of all that’s passed before it will always remain an indelible part of the wood’s very core. Its scars are far greater than a simple second skin. They don’t comprise a mask or a chain or a rope to be cut and cast aside.

It’s too late for it to become anything different.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's so bored._

It’s only eight in the morning, and Namie’s already annoyed with him.

Ha – she’s _always_ annoyed with Orihara Izaya. Orihara Izaya is a first-rate jerk, after all. He doesn’t give much of a damn what that brother-complex woman thinks of him, either, but he likes the sound of his own voice and appreciates being listened to by his beloved humans. Yagiri Namie may have quite the generous helping of undesirable characteristics, but she’s no less human for that. On the contrary, in fact – humans are ugly creatures by nature. Namie just has some special peculiarities.

“Haven’t had your morning coffee yet?” she wonders sarcastically as the informant toys with the plastic end of his pen for the hundredth time that morning. He’s been interspersing the tuneless clicking with bored sighs and the shuffling of fabric on fabric as he fidgets – crossing and uncrossing his legs, his arms, his feet perpetually tapping the floor and the back of his desk.

“How sweet of you, Namie-san, could you be offering to make some for me? Please do,” Izaya responds with a flippant grin.

The look on her face says that she’s plainly aware of the effort he’s putting into annoying her. She’s smart enough not to respond, of course – save for a short, haughty sigh, and she treats the next stack of forms and files with a bit more force than should be strictly necessary.

“Namie-san,” Izaya whines after an extended period of what could hardly be called silence.

“What,” she states, her voice flatly unamused.

“There’s nothing to do,” Izaya explains to the ceiling as he leans far back in his swiveling chair. He lets his arms dangle over the back and sighs again; this time, he’s especially dramatic about it.

“Go for a walk,” Namie suggests, and to say that she looks uninterested would be an incredible understatement.

“Boring.”

“Then shut up.”

“Now that’s just rude,” Izaya pouts. “What am I paying you for, anyway?”

“You’re paying me to sit here filing your stupid documents, answering your calls, and otherwise getting involved in your perpetual idiocy. I take it the constant onslaught of white noise is just your idea of a bonus?”

Izaya chuckles. “You’re a lucky woman.”

“Shut up,” she repeats with a soft groan.

Izaya could go on. He almost does, but then again there’s really no point because there’s nothing bothering him – not at all, or at least not all that much. Boredom is funny. It just kind of comes and goes. Nothing in particular causes it, although it’s certainly a downer that there has to be so little going on right here in Ikebukuro – the city of lively lights and cars screeching, humans fighting and crying and the walls and streets seen from above and knives slicing thick air.

It seems that, for some reason, there’s just not much to be done here lately.

And _that_ doesn’t help at all.

 

_“You’re a monster,” Izaya calls cheerily over his shoulder as he and his pursuer narrowly avoid a group of high school students making their way home after a long day of dull routines and petty mischief. “How many of that last guy’s bones do you think you broke?”_

_He can hear Shizuo snarl behind him as his feet are met with solid ground; hearing the crunch of Shizuo landing mere meters away, he whips around to face the blonde. “Tsk, tsk,” he chirps – dodging, as he does, the slice of Shizuo’s fist coming from the right to miss his face by little more than a centimeter – “I’d place the estimate somewhere around twenty. Twenty-five, maybe.”_

_Shizuo stops moving to stare hard at the informant. He’s breathing fast and slightly flushed, but Izaya’s learned to assume that that’s merely a result of the fury driving his belligerence. The monster doesn’t get tired. He’s blood and violence and rage left permanently unchained._

_He’s not human enough – never has been, never will be – to experience exhaustion._

_“What do_ you _think, Shizu-chan?” Izaya wonders._

_Shizuo visibly bristles, his entire body all the way to the ends of his hair practically vibrating with rage. Izaya doesn’t expect a response from that hastily-drawn picture of violent passion, but Shizuo actually does open his mouth after a long moment of on-the-brink silence._

_“I think you should –”_

_“– get the hell out of_ your city _, right, Shizu-chan?”_

_“Stay the fuck away from me, flea!”_

_“And if I did,” Izaya wonders, “what would you do with yourself, Shizu-chan?”_

_The blonde doesn’t answer. He never has, not once._

Several hours later, Izaya is reclining very comfortably in a couch in the living room of his own apartment. Directly across from him is another of many clients – a government official, dark-haired and pale-skinned with wide eyes to complement his startling naïveté.

“You can’t possibly be serious!”

“You agreed to whatever price I might choose to set, did you not?” Izaya asks with a grandiose flourish of his hands. He smiles, too, and with that and his sharply pointed words he manages to direct the conversation as he pleases.

If the other man has decided to assume that Izaya’s confidence derives from the small advantage of security in his own territory, he’s wrong.

Of course, Izaya imagines that he _has_ assumed as much. He is, after all, the type of human who feels the need to believe himself far superior to those with whom he does business. It’s rather pathetic when one considers the power that the man actually wields as a government official. He’s a newcomer, but he’s adept and has been advancing quickly through the ranks of a complex bureaucracy.

It’s really too bad that he’s already found himself a reason to come looking for a certain underground informant.

“I’m afraid I can’t possibly pay you that much,” the man says with a hesitant air of finality. He’s hoping, of course, that Izaya will lower the price. It’s written all over his face, and Izaya’s done enough research already to know that his current salary couldn’t even begin to cover the exorbitant cost of information easily obtained through back alley deals and simple deception.

Naturally, the alternative is equally expensive. “How about telling me a little more about the people you work with, then?”

His guest blanches. “I – I couldn’t possibly…”

“Now, then,” Izaya teases, “I wouldn’t have expected anyone coming to me for something like this to be so straight-laced! You _do_ need those documents, don’t you?”

The man glances anxiously about – as if anyone with power enough to hurt him might be lurking behind the walls, hidden by the glint of tall windows or the shadows of desks and shelves full of books. He hems and haws and hesitates and _continues_ to hesitate until he can no longer resist the urge to give in to Izaya’s unyielding pressure.

He talks for a while, then, throws around some names and titles and unevidenced accusations, and eventually leaves with a sizable stack of paper and fine print.

It all goes so smoothly – just another job, and not a very interesting one at that. Izaya had hoped to uncover more that he hadn’t already known, but there’s nothing particularly special about what he’s just heard. He hasn’t observed anything out of the ordinary, anything especially beautiful in its flawed humanity. Nothing juicy enough to be truly worth looking into later.

He’s so bored.

 

_Back in high school, Izaya sometimes used to wonder what might have happened if he hadn’t hated Shizuo from the very genesis of their relationship._

_It wasn’t that he had ever regretted anything he’d done, of course. It was simply a matter of considering every possibility in a world of could-have-beens, would-have-beens, wish-it-hads. A pointless exercise, maybe, but it was and is also uniquely human. That was always Izaya’s reason for thinking about it – still is, every now and then._

_He’s always fancied himself an explorer of sorts._

_“We could even be friends,” he’d once said – hands outstretched, grin wide and too friendly to be true. He hadn’t meant it, but that hadn’t lessened Shizuo’s incredulous rage or the force behind his fist as it dislocated Izaya’s jaw._

_“At least stay away from each other at school,” Shinra had sighed later. “They’ll have to rebuild the place from the ground up if this continues for another year.”_

_They had, of course. He and Shizuo weren’t the only or even the main reason for that, but Izaya likes to tell himself that they were._

_“Remember that?” he says as he dodges another jarring impact. “You were adorable back then, Shizu-chan.”_

_“You never change,” Shizuo responds, his voice barely distinguishable from a growl as he reaches for a full trash can and proceeds to chuck it at the informant. “You’ve always been a fucking asshole.”_

_“Oh, have I?” Izaya laughs with a neat step sideways to avoid the impending collision. “I’m not the worst person living in this city, Shizu-chan.”_

There must be something. There’s always _something,_ and more often than not Izaya can find it online – chatrooms, emails and Internet forums. The Dollars’ webpage with its near-constant stream of rumors and opinions. News sites.

Izaya tries browsing them all for a while – skipping back and forth, clicking his way through page after page of glanced-over impersonalities and nothing that quite manages to capture his attention. He plays around on a forum for people contemplating suicide, but that’s an old entertainment and he’s not feeling up to it at the moment.

That done, there’s still at least one more option. He pulls up his favorite chatroom, logs in as usual and is pleased to see that both Tanaka Tarou and Setton are online.

It’s a start, at least.

Young, feminine, innocently morbid at times, always knowledgeable but not omniscient. He makes good use of emoticons and repeated hiragana as he offers the others a sprightly greeting.

Ah, it’s Kanra-san.

How have you been?

Kanra-chan is so bored, he explains. Why isn’t there anything to do around here lately~?

I’m not sure what you mean.

Isn’t this usually a busy time of year?

That last comment is made by Tanaka Tarou. There’s a brief moment of nothing, and then he posts again –

Oh, could you be talking about Heiwajima Shizuo-san’s disappearance?

Izaya blinks, smiles. Types quickly and waits for a response.

…

He hasn’t _disappeared,_ Setton writes after a long pause.

Ah? But now that you mention it, I haven’t seen him around ‘Bukuro lately. Maybe he was finally arrested by the police?

Setton takes a while to finish typing a response to Kanra’s prying. When she does finally finish, though, Izaya can’t help laughing out loud. The message reads, ‘I heard that he found a new employer. He’s calmed down a lot recently, but it’s probably still best not to bother him much – if you happen to see him, I mean.’

That _can’t_ be the whole story, but the tidbit certainly qualifies as interesting. Not because it involves Shizuo, mind, but because it might _possibly_ explain the noticeable difference in the city of late.

Izaya just might have to consider looking into it further.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He always feels this way when he’s about to run into Orihara Izaya._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit longer than I'd meant for it to be. I was going for consistent chapter lengths, but - hey, oh well!  
>   
>  ~~Also, sorry for the large time gap between posts! I'll do my best to post earlier...!~~  
>   
> 

It’s raining again. Fucking winter weather, Shizuo grumbles, but far worse than that is the stench of his workplace – not far off now, and hell if it hasn’t been kind of nice walking there, anyway.

Beats actually _being_ there.

It’s funny, though, because today the smell is worse – not really a smell at all from this far away, of course, but there’s that feeling of foreboding with which he is ever so unhappily familiar. It’s the new place he’s quickly learned to fear and despise coupled with an old annoyance, hatred urge to kill murder maim and crush.

He always feels this way when he’s about to run into Orihara Izaya.

 

_“You must have something like a sixth sense just for that guy,” Tom laughs. Shizuo’s clothes are torn in places, his face dirt-smudged and he’s leaning balefully over a plateful of gyoza – the first course of many on days like this, after hours of work and unsuccessful flea hunts. Tom is sitting across from him with that pacifying look he gets after particularly violent days on the job._

_“Shut up,” Shizuo mutters, but there’s little real venom in the words. Tom-san’s not even remotely at fault, after all, and having him here is just a little better than being alone._

_Shizuo hates that – isolation, a word he knows all too well – but he’s never been any good with people. Tom-san’s one of just a few who feel safe being near a man who could easily lose it and flip the table over on him in less than half a second._

_He’s always felt like he owes Tom double for that – steady job, steady companionship. They don’t even have to talk much._

_Not that they don’t, sometimes._

_“Don’t let it bother you,” Tom suggests. “You did great today.”_

_Shizuo sighs. That’s a lie, he’s sure, but he can’t help appreciating the thought. He can feel the crease in his brow gradually disappear as he relaxes his shoulders, stops frowning and mumbles a shy thanks. “Sorry for running off…”_

_Tom-san chuckles. “Used to it. Looks like good exercise, anyway – right?”_

_Shizuo frowns again, briefly. “It’s not supposed to be. I’ll really kill that flea bastard the minute he lets me catch him.”_

_Tom’s smile is more amused than Shizuo believes is justified. “So,” he wonders, “he has to_ let _you catch him?”_

There’s no flea waiting for Shizuo at the bar, but there _is_ someone else – dark-eyed, smooth-skinned and essentially good-looking in most facets of his appearance, he claims to have been hanging out for ‘an hour or so’ when the blonde meanders into the space behind the counter.

“Katsuo,” he says, offering his hand to a bewildered Shizuo. “And you’re Heiwajima Shizuo-kun, right?”

Shizuo grunts to acknowledge that he’s listening, mostly, and his hand on Katsuo’s is probably cool and wet – feels that way, anyhow, and he’s sure that the trembling is more than just a figment of his imagination. He wonders if his little guest – probably right around Shizuo’s age, by the looks of him, so what the ‘-kun’ honorific is for Shizuo doesn’t know – has noticed his agitation yet.

He wonders if he even remotely cares.

“Oh, please don’t worry,” the man reassures him suddenly. “I have no intention of doing you any harm.”

Shizuo shrugs, glaring helplessly down at the floor to one side. So he’s noticed. Most probably do, but few ever bother to acknowledge it.

It’s a sentiment that Shizuo appreciates not at all.

Katsuo laughs – an awkward silence filler, but what can he do short of carrying stubbornly on with his nice guy act? – and then claps a hand to Shizuo’s shoulder and nods. “Right, well… shall we?”

Shizuo curses silently as he nods. “Figured,” he mutters. No one comes to him for anything else these days. He’s a tool, after all, a doll rather than a monster, painted black and blue and sometimes red. He’ll probably never be good for anything else – so, he wonders darkly, why should he so much as hope for anything different?

“I’m not like the others,” Katsuo murmurs back, eyes trained coolly on the blonde’s face as emotion after painful emotion washes over it. “I’ll make it good for you, too, Shizuo-kun.”

_He’s out having coffee with Kasuka – dark, bitter liquid and he’s never really liked it but he goes out of his way to order the same thing as his brother anyway. The little café is one of Kasuka’s favorites, after all, and on a rare day off he’s chosen to spend a few hours here with Shizuo._

_It’s good, relaxing. Outings like this fly in the face of the bad feeling Shizuo gets sometimes – like he’s losing touch with his brother, like they’re strangers or not even on speaking terms. He can’t stand feeling that way, either, because he values his brother like he does Tom-san and Celty and maybe even Shinra – another someone willing to accept and spend time with him, and he’d be the first to admit that he probably needs more of those._

_Next time, he’ll have to make sure that_ he’s _the one inviting_ Kasuka _somewhere._

_“How’s work?” he wonders after another long moment of silence._

_“Good,” Kasuka answers – vaguely, which is like him, but there’s a definite spark of interest in his eyes as he raises his gaze from the lid of his coffee to focus on Shizuo. “What about you, nii-san?”_

_“Same,” Shizuo grins. “I still get chewed out for fighting, though…”_

_Kasuka smiles the way he always has – almost too slight to see unless you know to look for it. “With Orihara Izaya-san?”_

_Shizuo flinches, as if the name itself had power enough to hurt him. “Sometimes,” he admits._

_“It’s been a while…”_

_Since high school, he means. It’s true – it’s been almost ten years, now, but Shizuo’s not about to change the way he acts – chasing, yelling, threatening. Throwing things – everything, vending machines and steel garbage bins and street signs and whatever else he can happen to get his hands on._

_Not until that bastard Izaya does, anyway._

_“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I’m working on that…”_

_Kasuka nods. “It’s fine.” He doesn’t seem to see the problem, but Shizuo can’t quite let it go._

_Because his brother hates that he fights. Shizuo knows that, but as much as he hates himself for failing to do anything about it – well, he hates Izaya ten or twenty times more. And the flea goes well out of his way to provoke Shizuo whenever their paths cross._

_“Sorry,” he repeats._

_He can’t change until Izaya does, he thinks, but that’s because he’s too damn weak._

 

Katsuo’s concept of ‘good’ is, of course, just a little skewed. If it feels good to him, after all, why shouldn’t it feel good to Shizuo? The blonde would bet money on that being the creep’s actual rationale.

It’s one of the most painful experiences Shizuo’s ever had in this room.

“Nice muscles,” Katsuo marvels when he sees the blonde’s body – tensed all over with a few beads of sweat glistening on the surface of his skin – but his own is just as well-muscled. Better, even, ‘cause it’s not like Shizuo ever had to work at building any; it was just a natural side effect of the lifting… if one could call it that. His strength had always been something beyond simple anatomy.

That’s what Shinra used to say, anyway.

Still, despite the fact that Shizuo can force himself to offer his client a reluctant ‘thank you,’ he can’t help stiffening further the moment he feels the glide of Katsuo’s hands on his chest. His heart continues to hammer away, there, beneath cool fingers and a commanding raised-eyebrow smirk as he’s guided clumsily down to rest on his back and the floor.

The spot is maybe 20 centimeters to the left of where he most often lies, and yes – he knows this place well enough already to be able to tell at a glance.

A glance is all he gets. Katsuo immediately takes it upon himself to loosen the zipper of Shizuo’s pants, to tug the belt free and his pants and boxers down together.

“Lovely,” he purrs, as if he were gazing down at his very own property. “You’ve got quite the body, Shizuo-kun.”

Talking like they’ve known each other for a long time, the bastard – Shizuo would just love to snap at him, to insult him with all the violent words and earnest resistance he’s still perfectly capable of dishing out –

– but of course he learned early on that things like that will only get him nowhere fast. His employers have the benefit of influence, after all, and if he ever wants to hold down another job – strength or not – he doesn’t have a choice.

Not a fucking choice, just beatings and rape and never any thought or control on his side of the deal.

“Guess I should thank you,” Shizuo grinds out as his cock is given a few experimental strokes. He shudders every time the other man’s skin comes into contact with his own, but for all that he continues to will himself to relax. Don’t move. Don’t think. Don’t even open your eyes if they don’t explicitly demand that you do.

“You’re welcome,” the other says with a casual sort of kindness – his own special brand, apparently, but Shizuo’s seen plenty like it. All it takes is another few light tugs, measured squeezes and little invisible circles traced in reddening skin – his cock grows increasingly hard, already dripping precum and twitching under Katsuo’s ministrations.

Up to that point, it feels good enough. All Shizuo has to do is lie still and let his body react as it will. It’s disgusting, he’s disgusting, and Katsuo is a disgusting bastard – but it’s fine as long as he doesn’t move an inch. He’s used to withdrawing into himself, now, letting something dead and broken take the wheel for a while.

Sometimes he wonders if he’s forgotten how to drive on his own.

Dark eyes glitter dimly as Katsuo’s hands ease Shizuo half-vertical with his legs still sprawled in front of him. The other man stands between them and offers the blonde his cock – already swollen and bright and Shizuo takes it into his mouth without bothering to resist. He lets his breath go with a soft sigh – Katsuo shivers just like anyone else would as the warm air tickles his skin – before he gives his client’s erection an experimental suck.

The shiver, innocent enough at first, then becomes something a touch more violent. Katsuo thrusts into Shizuo’s mouth the moment his tongue finds the slit in the head of his cock and begins to tease it. Shizuo has to pull back to keep himself breathing, but Katsuo’s not having any of that.

He fists his hands in Shizuo’s hair and forces him to swallow his cock all at once. Shizuo chokes and shudders and reaches up to hold the other’s hips in a weak attempt to slow the movement – but nothing, Katsuo’s strong and Shizuo’s not and when he tells the blonde to bob his head more “and don’t worry, Shizuo-kun, you won’t _suffocate._ Just try to relax,” Shizuo has no choice but to do as he’s told.

 

_“The most embarrassing thing that ever…?”_

_Shizuo’s leaning in to read the screen of Celty’s PDA aloud, and as he nears the end of the sentence his brow furrows into a frown that remains half-hidden behind blue-tinted sunglasses._

_His companion nods her helmet emphatically, apparently urging him to answer._

_“Huh,” he exhales. The sort-of-a-sigh comes accompanied by a small stream of cigarette smoke. “Dunno…”_

_[I know – you just don’t feel like telling me, right?]_

_Shizuo grins. “Nah, I don’t really care. It’s just… nothing in particular stands out.”_

_Celty leans over her PDA for the briefest of moments before holding it out at arm’s length for Shizuo to read._

_[Liar!]_

_Shizuo laughs and lets Celty give his shoulder a playful shove. “Okay, okay… let’s see –”_

_He stops, looks suddenly serious and sighs softly. “I guess it’d be a lot of things related to these” – he points at his arms, notices the confused tilt of Celty’s helmet and explains – “my strength, I mean. Stupid stuff that happened when I was a kid.”_

_The dullahan looks immediately penitent. She knows a touchy topic when she sees one, after all._

_[Sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it –]_

_Shizuo sees what she’s writing and stops her hand with his own. “I said it’s fine. It was a long time ago.”_

_He’d always hated the looks he got from other kids, the ostracization that persists to an extent even now, and every little failure – the thrown desks, ruined classrooms and scared teachers. How he eventually began to give up and what that did to him –_ still _does to him, every day and every moment he spends fighting on the streets._

_He explains it all to her, and she listens quietly beside him. She always does, always will, and Shizuo’s glad because she’s the only person anywhere to whom he can talk this openly._

_Still, he doesn’t mention what it felt like to lose to Izaya for the first time – and every time after that, the crush of a truck colliding heavily with his body, head-on, and the extra sting of the flea’s words every time they spoke –_ speak _. He hates the flea almost as much as he hates his lack of control, but there’s always been something like mortification there, as well._

_Every time he looks at him…_

Katsuo comes once – hot liquid flecking the back of Shizuo’s throat, stinging and itching and Shizuo feels a little like he’s drowning – but the man doesn’t appear to feel inclined to stop there. He’s insatiable, like most, and he drops all pretense of nicety the moment he grabs the blonde and roughly forces him onto his knees and forearms.

“Don’t move,” he warns as he reaches down to stroke the soft skin of Shizuo’s inner thighs. “It’ll hurt more if you do.”

“Thought it was s’posed to feel good,” Shizuo retorts. He tries to sound innocently confused, but the comment comes out harsh.

Harsh enough that he’s probably done irreparable damage to his standing, already, so he takes a shuddery, deep breath and adds, “Gonna get on with fucking me blind, then? Did you really think it wasn’t obvious –”

He stops.

Because it _hurts._

This Katsuo bastard is the first client of the day for Shizuo. He hasn’t been loosened up at all – doesn’t prepare himself before showing up here, either, because that would be the same as acknowledging this as a permanent part of his life – like a _career,_ the job he was never supposed to have. It shames him enough as it is, and even his own touch scares him like goose bumps, nausea and a dizzy coldness that slithers its way up and down every inch of his bared flesh.

He’s unprepared, then, for the bastard’s sudden all-at-once shove into him, his hot breath dampening the nape of Shizuo’s neck and his hands feeling up every inch of his trembling body.

“If _that_ was what you wanted,” he pants, “why didn’t you just _say_ so, Shizuo-kun?”

Shizuo moans as his muscles clench around the intrusion. He’s trying to adjust, maybe, or in the best case scenario to hurt Katsuo badly enough that he’ll pull out on his own – but he’s not as strong as he used to be, not as strong as he needs to be and definitely not as strong as most of the people who come looking for him.

“Damn,” Katsuo mutters. “You’re so _tight.”_

 _No shit,_ Shizuo wants to scream. And get out, get away, stop _touching me_ like you own me – but in a way Katsuo _does_ own him, every inch of him for the time being. He may have been looking for some weak excuse to do as he pleased, but in the end it was and is all up to him – what happens to Shizuo, what he does and what is done to him.

Shizuo knows what to say, which words will keep him safe as things stand now.

He knows, and he _resents_ himself for it.

“M-more,” he whimpers. “I – I want you. A-a-all…”

He says it as quickly as he can just to get over with, but Katsuo seems to like that just as well. He shivers, mutters something about how utterly _adorable_ Shizuo is when he’s being shy, and then promptly forces his way just a bit deeper, brushing Shizuo’s prostate by chance and chuckling benevolently at the disgusted-pleasured shudder that has Shizuo tossing his head back so that the ends of his hair tickle the space between his shoulder blades.

The thrusting in and out begins in earnest after that. Shizuo’s hips buck automatically with every swing forward, and he barely notices when his eyes crash shut and he slams his forehead into the floor below. It hurts, but that’s nothing next to the steady rhythm of painful thrusts stretching and bruising his prone body.

The speed increases – Shizuo’s toes curling in as his stomach twists alarmingly inside of him – and just as Katsuo seems to be reaching some sort of climax he grunts and twists to face what Shizuo can only assume is the door to their little sanctuary.

“My, my,” he hears. “Could that be our very own Shizu-chan?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shizu-chan's all his for now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated so quickly this time~!

It _is_ Shizu-chan, which concludes Izaya’s little search after several _(entirely too exhausting)_ days of dead ends and wasted time. The run-down bar on the corner of something and who the fuck cares was supposed to be Izaya’s last stop, anyway. He’s known about it for a long time, after all, and no one likes to think that what they’re searching for might be right under their noses.

Shizuo’s always been predictable like that, though.

The place has always had a terrible reputation – or a great one, depending on who you ask, because the service is supposedly quite nice _if you know what I mean._ For a bartender, though, and especially for one with looks like Shizuo’s – yeah, that’s where the bad supposedly comes in. Izaya’s been by once or twice in just under a decade of sleuthing around Ikebukuro, but even he has other haunts he’d rather go to for information.

Leave it to Shizu-chan to know nothing of that.

Well – he’s not properly a part of the underground, anyway, so it might’ve been a bit much to expect him to have that kind of foresight –

– but _really,_ one look should’ve been enough to indicate that something’s not quite right here, ne?

Of course, Izaya would have been inclined to assume that the blonde was somewhat holding his own in that place, anyway, if it hadn’t been for the look on the face of Shizuo’s client, the shouting and Shizuo doubled over in pain with shouting loud enough to be fully audible throughout the modest establishment.

Something about not inviting guests here, ever, and don’t you understand what sort of position you’re in –

– Izaya’s got an idea, himself, but he’d really like to know more.

That’s why he folds his arms on his chest, makes himself comfortable in the shadows of a building not far from the one where Shizuo is apparently being punished – and waits.

 

_“You sure watch him an awful lot,” Shinra muses to a fully-absorbed-not-paying-attention Izaya – ankle-deep in observation, binoculars and bottled water for the wait – right, the whole nine._

_“Any time now,” Izaya murmurs to himself. “Shizu-chan’s never late, you know~!”_

_The brunette sighs. “Uh-huh…” Izaya’s sure he’s used to this sort of thing by now, and if he feels sorry for Shizuo it doesn’t show as much as Izaya imagines it should. Shizuo’s not the one being hurt, anyway, but Shinra’s quite fond of pointing out that his friend doesn’t exactly appreciate being forced into fights he’s done nothing to start._

_“Ah – there!”_

_It’s Shizuo, hands buried in his pockets with his shirt unbuttoned in front and that ridiculous blonde of his. He_ looks _like a street punk right down to the way he walks – really, it’s as if he’s begging Izaya to set him up with fights like these. He makes it too easy, so if he’s not doing it on purpose then he’s an idiot and deserves the consequences regardless._

_Shinra sees what Izaya’s looking at, too, and his eyes widen exponentially as he straightens up to get a better look._

_“I-Izaya-kun – that’s – that’s way too much…!”_

_“He’ll be fine, Shinra,” Izaya says with a casual wave of his hand. “He’s a monster, after all.”_

_Thirty guys, all with blunt weapons, knives and eager grins. Laughing, jeering, looking for a fight…_

_Yes, Shizuo should be fine. He’s always fine, if also a bit angry after all’s said and done._

 

Shizuo stays working at the bar until late, late, late. Izaya’s bored with waiting, uninterested in the prospect of returning home before his little adventure is done, reluctant to go back inside so soon and that’s all just so very _frustrating_.

The frustration, however, disappears the moment the blonde steps – _limps?_ – out into the dark-bright-dark of a road lined with unlit alleyways and a few open shops. Izaya definitely feels like he should be hearing trumpets or drums or something because simply seeing the object of his amusement again is like a triumph in itself.

Shizu-chan’s all his for now.

He slips past the shadows and into the light just as Shizuo is coming close, brown eyes invisible behind the curtain of his bangs and – yes, he’s really walking with a slight limp.

“Hi-ya, Shizu-chan,” he greets with a smile that’s all _let’s-be-friends_ and _where’ve-you-been?_

 

_Izaya doesn’t get angry very often. He gets annoyed, bored, frustrated and impatient. He frowns upon certain practices and prefers to shun those who act them out, mocks and openly hates a few people – and one not quite a person, anyway – but in all he sees himself as a pretty tolerant guy. He’s rational. Anger’s not, and that’s why it’s Shizuo’s thing and not his._

_Nevertheless, anger is probably what he feels when Shizuo loses his job for the nth time, when he’s carted off to a police station and questioned for a few hours before being let go to walk home in the dark._

_At first Izaya assumes that it’s because of Tanaka Tom and his being there to offer Shizuo a leg up – right after Izaya’s gone and put all that effort into messing things up for his rival, and isn’t that just cruel coming from this guy who hasn’t even the decency to see Shizuo as less than human?_

_Thinking that doesn’t really make Izaya feel better, though, so – what, then? He’s not mad about Shizuo being released from the station because he knew from the start that that would happen.  Leaving Ikebukuro doesn’t bother him, either, ‘cause he’s so done with this city, and besides – he can always come back._

_It occurs to him, then, that he might be angry with_ himself.

_For what, he wonders, and then it hits him._

_For succeeding, for getting Shizuo into trouble to begin with. Something about it is unsatisfying, and maybe Shizu-chan should have fought him harder. Maybe Izaya wanted to see him escape the role that’d been laid out for him._

_Angry because he wants Shizuo to be safe, maybe? Couldn’t be._

_He ignores all that in favor of more manipulation, distanced hatred and jabs that always manage to hit Shizuo where it hurts. He’s very good at keeping the anger under wraps._

 

Of course, it’d be rude of Izaya not to explain himself to Shizuo, so he does. He narrates everything, from boredom to finding Shizuo in a bar on the dark side of town and everything in between. Shizuo stands frozen throughout all of it, shuts his eyes only to open them upon hearing every juicier detail and the things Izaya’s thought – the things that point to what he now knows.

It’s funny, Izaya thinks, that the blonde doesn’t just leap straight into a fight with him. The informant’s ready to go – the hand he’s hiding in his pocket is gripping a knife – and his stance should be recognizable as the one he always slips into just before setting off running.

“…and there’s Shizu-chan, all pink and bent over with some guy laying into him – ne, Shizu-chan, was that man your lover~?”

Shizuo pales further, looking sick and altogether too disgusted for words. “Like hell,” he rasps. “Anyone like that…”

Izaya cocks his head to one side – innocently curious, but he pretty much knows already – _anyone like that?_ “Then what were you doing, hm?”

Shizuo shivers, stops mid-step-forward to turn and stare at the informant. His eyes are hopeless, Izaya notices, not at all the rage-filled ones he’s accustomed to seeing. “Leave me alone, flea,” he mutters, looking scared and outraged and humiliated all at once, like maybe Izaya’s the perfect person to take his stress out on –

 – and then he turns to start home, feet dragging on pavement – one more than the other, of course.

How rude of him. Of course he should be furious, fighting mad the way he only gets when he’s around Orihara Izaya. He should at least be reaching out to strangle the informant, to threaten him with death and bloodstained pavement. He should consider raising his voice a little, too, because the nighttime has a way of swallowing sound when it’s not bellowingly loud.

Izaya pouts, follows close behind Shizuo and then speeds up so that he’s walking right beside him with his hands laced behind his back. “Is that what you’ve been asking everyone to do?” he wonders.

Stay away, he means. This guy’s always seemed to fit the role of a loner, too.

Shizuo slows to another stop. “…What?”

“Don’t want any help, do you? Poor thing,” and Izaya reaches over to take Shizuo’s hand in his own, “you’re scared, aren’t you? What’s the matter?”

Shizuo’s shivering turns to a shudder, and his eyes come crashing shut with a muted sob-like sound from somewhere deep within his chest. He tries to shake Izaya’s hand away, but Izaya hangs on – a surprise, in itself, because brushing a mere flea off should be no problem for a brute like Heiwajima Shizuo.

Interesting.

“Let go.”

“Make me.”

Shizuo swallows hard, takes a trembling step back and gives his arm a sharp tug.

Izaya hangs on easily, grin turning to mouth-half-opened shock and raised eyebrows. “Shizu-chan?”

The blonde shakes his head, relaxes that limb and grits his teeth so that the line of his jaw sharpens. “I can’t make you,” he whispers, “I can’t” – he groans – “I can’t do a fucking thing, Izaya. You’re supposed to be an informant, right – so shouldn’t you know that, already?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s_ scared, _completely and honestly scared of being this close to anyone, himself and Izaya included._

Shizuo’s not sure which is worse – the look Izaya gives him, like he’s torn between pity and amusement, or just the fact that of all the people Shizuo knows personally, this bastard had to be the one to find out about this – and in the worst way possible.

He keeps remembering it, has been for hours – the humiliation of baring himself to Izaya, totally vulnerable and doing something as disgusting as that with a scumbag like Katsuo. He can still feel the cool draft against his dripping cock, the skin of his ass and the tightening of Katsuo’s hands right before he pulled out to scream at Izaya, at Shizuo – and even then Izaya’d ignored him to stare straight back at the blonde where he laid curled on his side on the floor.

Dust and discarded clothes and all the little marks of past trysts.

He remembers his ages-ago conversation with Celty, his quiet acknowledgment of the humiliation of uncontrolled strength. If only he could go back to then, he thinks bitterly, because now he’d really have something to tell her.

It’s also sort of funny how he never noticed that Izaya’s actually pretty strong in his own right. Stronger than Heiwajima Shizuo after an exhausting day of work and repeated beatings and being fucked like a whining _dog_ by anyone and everyone under the roof of that godforsaken bar. He’s surprised he can even walk straight, honestly, and there’s no question as to whether Izaya’s noticed him limping.

“All I know,” Izaya informs him then, “is that, for some reason, Shizu-chan’s working a happening new job as a bartender and cheap whore” – hearing that word, Shizuo winces and lowers his gaze to the faint outlines of his feet against pavement – “but of course there’s more to it than that. So, Shizu-chan, what brings you here?”

Shizuo raises his eyes to stare incredulously back at Izaya. It’s fucking obvious that the little bastard wants him to _spell it out_ – wants a story, Shizuo’s suffering in pretty words and phrases to be written down and sold to the highest bidder.

“Better get researching, then,” he snarls, and the outrage of the moment moves him to give his arm another sharp tug; this time, Izaya lets him go without a fight so that he stumbles back and nearly falls to the ground.

“Come on, Shizu-chan,” Izaya whines, and in the flicker of a second he’s mere centimeters from Shizuo with his hands caressing the damp blonde of his hair. “It took me a long, long time to make it this far, and now you’re going to make me work even harder for just a little more information?”

“You already _know,_ dammit,” Shizuo breathes, not missing the slight pressure of Izaya’s thumb held to the sensitive spot where his pulse is slugging its way through keeping him alive.

“Do I?” Izaya wonders.

Shizuo swallows, hard, and glances to either side of them. He could pull away now, turn and run and – hell, it wouldn’t work, anyway, Izaya’s _always_ been faster than he is and he can’t even walk right at the moment, let alone run.

“I’d just follow you,” Izaya murmurs with a triumphant grin, and Shizuo promptly concludes that it wouldn’t’ve taken a genius to read his mind, anyway. The bastard can pretend to be as omniscient as he wants, but Shizuo knows better.

‘Cause, after all, Izaya knows facts, not what Shizuo feels – and feeling is something he’d love to stop doing altogether, but he can’t and that’s becoming the root of the problem. Without knowing that – and he never will, not really, because Izaya’s not that invested nor is he that kind of person – the flea can’t hope to understand everything the way he must want to.

Still, it’s a fact that there’s no easy way out of this conversation, at least not as long as Izaya remains dead-set on having it. Shizuo closes his eyes, willing himself to calm down fast, to ignore the cool of the informant’s hands and that infernal smile of his. His warm breath tickling the nape of Shizuo’s neck. “Please, not now,” he manages. His voice is clipped short of full-blown emotion, but the heat just below his eyes isn’t looking good.

“Yes, _now._ I’ll even throw in a ride home – free of charge, okay?”

Shizuo opens his eyes slowly, the way someone might if an expected blow had failed to hit its mark. “What, like” – he wets his lips with a deliberate swipe of his tongue – “like you’re gonna help me?”

Izaya nods.

The question slips past his lips before Shizuo can stop it.

_“Why?”_

 

_Shizuo can count on one hand the number of people who’ve treated him like a genuine human being._

_There’s the bakery woman with her cold milk, warm smiles – and then there’s the crush of broken glass and the glaring white of a cast on her slender arm._

_In a sling._

_There’s Kasuka telling his brother that he’s not scared of him, and sure enough it doesn’t show on his face no matter how much he’s threatened with refrigerators and furniture and, hell – Shizuo doesn’t even remember. There’s his being there for Shizuo, the boxes full of bartender uniforms and his confidence in his older brother’s ability to hold down a job._

_And then, of course, there’s losing that job and ripping uniform after uniform until Shizuo’s sure he’ll run out by the end of the year. There’s the handful of trips Kasuka’s had to take to the hospital over the course of a decade and a half._

_There’s Shinra, always willing to talk to him, always near when everyone else keeps their distance – but he barely counts, anyway, because he’s a freak himself and he’d do just about anything for the chance to dissect his friend._

_Celty. She’s the first person he’s ever had long conversations with, and she’s always got something good to say when he’s done spilling his guts to her. She doesn’t even mind him being kinda insensitive, kinda crass and violent; to her, they’re just quirks. He’s never done anything to hurt her – at least, he doesn’t think he has – but sometimes he worries._

She’s strong, Shizuo _– says Tom-san, and he’s the guy who got mad on Shizuo’s behalf all those years ago when a bunch of other students treated him like a tool, a monster. That was middle school, and now they’re both adults and Tom’s still there for him despite all the trouble he causes at work._

_He even buys Shizuo dinner, sometimes, and their relationship may be professional but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be friends, too. Doesn’t mean that Shizuo can’t trust him wholeheartedly._

_Then, also – Kadota and those guys he’s always driving around with._

_Simon, Vorona, even Izaya’s sisters –_

_–_ what, _Shizuo thinks with a tiny grin,_ maybe there’s more than five after all, _and he gets ready for work with Tom and that silly little smile of his doesn’t quite disappear even as he steps outside._

_Months later, of course, he’ll wish and wish and wish that he’d remembered that for more than a day or two of failed efforts at restraint and heavy property damage. Hurt people, idiots mostly, but the guilt doesn’t let up much because of that._

_Things get bad. Things always get bad._

_Doesn’t mean the people who care aren’t still around – just means, y’know, that he has to be careful what he lets on when he’s around them._

_He has to be careful not to make them worry._

 

Izaya doesn’t respond right away. His brow even creases – probably not because he sincerely needs to give it a lot of thought, Shizuo’s sure, but the bastard really does love to add a dramatic flair to every little thing he does.

And Shizuo doesn’t know what he expects to hear from Izaya. He doesn’t expect it to make him feel better, of course, but beyond a little extra hurt and mortification he’s not sure how much worse any of this could get.

There’s a long stretch of silence, Izaya’s hands still held soft and gentle to the blonde’s cheeks and jaw and hair. It’s not like the touch of anyone who comes wanting instant gratification, but it’s skin on skin and that alone is enough to send Shizuo’s heart thumping erratically in his chest.

He’s _scared,_ completely and honestly scared of being this close to anyone, himself and Izaya included.

The silence continues. Shizuo’s busy feeling disgusted with himself, swallowing his fear and anger and shame while Izaya’s hands stroke him gently, little up-down motions and – he shivers – he can hear it like it’s inside him.

He chokes on a whimper.

“Because I’m worried about you,” Izaya decides, hands returning quickly to his sides as Shizuo’s eyes widen and his own expression slowly softens into a quiet smile. It’s nothing like the ones from before, the taunting mocking hurting looks he gives Shizuo when he tells him what a monster he is, when he calls him an idiot and dodges every intentionally-provoked blow.

“Worried… about me…?”

“Sure,” Izaya says with an easy shrug of his shoulders. “You’re entertaining, Shizu-chan, and I don’t particularly like the thought of other people owning you the way I’m supposed to.”

“You don’t own me,” Shizuo mutters.

“Not that way,” Izaya laughs. “But, you know, you own me, too. That’s what enemies are.”

“I don’t need… that.”

“That?”

“More enemies,” Shizuo mumbles. “I don’t even want to fight you anymore, Izaya, so just – get lost, please.”

Exactly, he thinks. He doesn’t need anyone’s help – least of all Izaya’s – and every added touch of animosity is just another pick wearing away at what’s left of his will. More of this, more arguing and Izaya screwing with his head – he doesn’t need it, really doesn’t, and right now he’d probably do anything to escape it.

“Think you’ll be able to forget about little old me that easily?” Izaya wonders.

Shizuo’s smile is forlorn, wet-eyed. He’s having a hard time biting back the lump in his throat, the dizzy ache and exhaustion.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, and then he starts to cry.

 

_Shizuo’s family was never one for having pets, and somehow that’s carried over into Shizuo’s adult years. Maybe it’s because he worries that he’d break anything small like a cat – he prefers cats, can’t help the slow admiring blush when he sees kittens up for adoption on TV or strays perusing the streets of Ikebukuro – and then of course there’s the fact that his current apartment building doesn’t allow animals._

_When he’s asked about things like that, he never has much to say, really, and the one story he can come up with is sort of vague and not especially cheerful._

_He and Kasuka used to have to walk pretty far to grade school, and at one point he can remember a big dog living at a house along the way. They probably named it, but he honestly can’t remember what – just that they always stopped to pet the thing. Shizuo’s pretty sure he also fed it bits of his lunch or leftover breakfast every now and then._

_He remembers liking it, the feel of its soft fur under his hands and the way its tongue lolled out like it was smiling._

_He also remembers seeing its owner beat it, shouting and kicking and the dog tied up with nowhere to go._

_The one time he heard its painful, scared bark and how much it hurt not to do something to help it._

_The last time he can remember seeing it, the dog was no longer tied up, but still his master was waling away at it and it never tried to run, not once._

_Didn’t even stand up…_

_If he could somehow go back to that day, he thinks, he’d jump the fence to lend a hand. That could have been enough, maybe, to remind the dog how to live, how to fight._

Izaya watches him without saying a word, watches for a long time and the tears won’t stop as long as he continues to do so. Shizuo’s on his knees, but he doesn’t remember collapsing. It hurts, because the ground is hard and his knees, especially, are bruised and chaffed enough as it is.

“How long,” Shizuo hisses between sobs, “do you plan on standing there, bastard?”

Izaya surprises him by kneeling in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder and sighing slow and soft. Shizuo can’t see the flea’s face through his fingers and the blur of saltwater, but he imagines him smiling.

“Until you’re done, I suppose,” he murmurs.

Shizuo doesn’t respond, but when Izaya takes his hand in his own, he doesn’t fight it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Thing is, giving in’s not exactly what Izaya wants out of Shizuo now – not easily, at least, not without a fight or some thought or contribution on this moron’s part._

Shizuo’s mind is alarmingly simple. Izaya knows this for a fact – has for a long time – and he’s not afraid to exploit it for the idiot’s own sake. A fun toy’s no good broken, anyway, and Shizuo’s so downright pathetic that surely _anyone_ would want to lend him a helping hand now. There are more stylish ways to run a person into the ground, anyway, and this method just doesn’t suit someone like Shizu-chan.

He follows Izaya like a little lost child – doesn’t even complain about his hand in Izaya’s or the speed with which he’s being made to walk. Just sniffles intermittently and uses the back of his sleeve to make futile sweeps at the damp of his face. It’s honestly pathetic, Izaya thinks – pathetic enough to depress even him.

He’s almost glad when Shizuo finally decides to speak up.

“Thought you were gonna get a car or something.”

“Hmm? Don’t you enjoy walking?”

Shizuo doesn’t stop or talk back or anything, which of course leaves Izaya with no choice but to finally glance back at him. He’s looking miserable all over again, of course, and he must not even notice Izaya watching him because his own eyes are fixed doggedly on the ground in front of him.

Loud sigh. “Tired, huh? You really are weak, Shizu-chan.”

That, surely, will drag another reaction of some sort from Shizuo. The belligerence is never all gone from him, after all, and Shizuo’s never been less than incredibly powerful until now. Surely it’s just a fluke, and the blonde must have pride enough left to argue with Izaya –

“…I know.”

Izaya stops, bodily turns to face Shizuo and widens his eyes. “Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo shakes his head slowly, but his own eyes are still as soulless as ever. “Where’re we going, flea?”

That’s it. That’s just it. Shizuo practically begging for this, and to say that Izaya doesn’t mind would be an understatement anyway.

“My place.”

 

_“Quite the slut, aren’t you?” Namie comments in her usual snide way as Izaya stumbles through the front door of his office. “Did you at least get anything good out of the deal?”_

_Izaya chuckles breathlessly, collapses into an office chair and cushions his legs on the smooth dark of his desk. He’s exhausted, of course, and more than a little hung over – but, yes, the pain in his lower back and the sting of one or two bite marks are all well worth it. They usually are, because – regardless of what his secretary seems to think – he doesn’t drop his pants for just anyone._

_Only the ones who have significant information to offer, naturally._

_“Disgusting,” Namie scoffs._

_“I’m honestly surprised to hear that from you, Namie-san,” Izaya teases. “At least I’m not into fucking my younger siblings.”_

_She glares over at him but doesn’t justify his comment with a response. He probably wouldn’t have heard her either way, though, because he’s already been thoroughly drawn into the feverish beat of the Internet. He has emails to send, chats to crash and people to impersonate. It’s fun and he’s got news and lies to spread in equal parts._

_He’s good at that, good at a lot of things. He’s good at reading people, good at using them and planning ahead. He’s good at gathering information – and being good at that often requires a bit of expertise in the art of intercourse._

_He always has flawless control, mental and physical and perfect to a ‘T.’_

Shizuo’s eyes widen as he slows to a stop behind Izaya. The informant expects him to ask for another reason, but instead Shizuo only flushes and stares down.

“I – I don’t have anything to wear,” he mumbles, “and I’ve got work tomorrow.”

“Forget about it, Shizu-chan. Just call in sick.”

He knows, of course, that Shizuo can’t easily do that. He waits again for the idiot to point that out, but as he returns to walking with the blonde trailing along behind – nothing. It’s as if Shizuo’s largely given up on changing the situation – boring, of course, and frustrating as hell for someone whose great love has always been pissing the brute off.

“You _can_ talk, you know,” he sighs irritably.

“Don’t wanna,” Shizuo mutters.

Fine, Izaya decides, then the only thing left for him to do is to make Shizuo _want_ to communicate a bit more readily.

He immediately speeds up and listens with some measure of satisfaction to the quickening of Shizuo’s breathing. He can hear the heavy drag of the blonde’s bad leg on the pavement and the muted grunts of exertion that he can’t quite bite back. Of course it must hurt, but as long as Shizuo doesn’t feel like doing anything to make it better – right, he has to _ask_ for the things he wants.

Shizuo’s just beginning to turn to seriously dead weight when Izaya finally stops them both before a small shop – amazing, really, that it can still be open at this hour, and he continues his silent treatment even as he leads his companion inside and gathers up a few pairs of sweatpants and other clothes. None are likely to look particularly great on Shizuo, but that’s part of the point.

“What size are you?” he wonders, and Shizuo stiffens almost instantly.

“None of your business,” he hisses. He eyes the clothes distastefully but says nothing by way of complaint. Izaya gets the feeling that the antagonism in his voice isn’t due to that, either, but rather a direct result of Izaya’s question.

Well, it’s not like Izaya can’t understand why Shizuo might worry a little about this kind of thing, after all.

He smiles up at the blonde – standing awkwardly a few feet away from him in an empty store, unheld hand opening and closing as if he misses the warmth – and nods slowly. It may be a negative answer to a harmless question, but at least it’s something.

“How unsociable of you, Shizu-chan! But it’s okay – just try these on, alright?” he chirps as he shoves his little pile of clothes into Shizuo’s arms. The blonde looks confused and uncertain of what to do, but he accepts the stuff anyway, stands staring down at it for a long time and then raises his eyes back to Izaya’s face.

Izaya expects protest, some kind of fight or anything that might draw a line connecting this Shizuo and the one he knows, but – of course, and maybe he’s expecting too much too soon – he’s disappointed again.

“Where do I go?” Shizuo wonders.

It’s not what Izaya wants, but it’s sort of funny – in an ironic way, at least – so he sighs dramatically, shows Shizuo the way to the dressing room and has to bite back a short chuckle as the blonde hesitates by the door. He looks at Izaya expectantly for a long moment before blinking and shaking his head again. A faint blush rises to his cheeks, and among many things he looks both ashamed and annoyed.

Mostly ashamed. Mostly a fish out of water.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and enters the small room alone.

 

_“What if he stopped reacting to you, Izaya-kun?”_

_‘He’ – meaning Shizuo, of course._ Always _Shizuo._

 _Izaya shifts uncomfortably – cross-legged, back pressed to the chain-link fence that lines the roof of the school building. He’d been just about to fall asleep when Shinra decided to open his big mouth, and of course –_ of course _it’s all for the sake of asking another of his incredibly stupid questions._

_He starts to answer, but Kadota leans in and adds, “Yeah – doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon, but maybe…”_

_Izaya shakes his head. “Shizu-chan can do whatever he wants.”_

_Wait. That’s not quite right._

_“And anyway,” he argues, “that monster’s too volatile to stay calm when I’m around.”_

_Better…_

_Kadota and Shinra both exchange an amused look before turning back to Izaya. “Really?” Shinra wonders._

_“Of course,” Izaya responds confidently._

_“Sounds like you’d be disappointed if he ever_ did _stop letting you get him all riled up,” Kadota laughs. Funny – he doesn’t usually have so much to say, but when a conversation suddenly involves a bit of well-intentioned teasing, he’s entirely prepared to contribute._

_“Duh,” Izaya says defensively. “He’s fun to mess with, after all.”_

_Naturally, he’s just about to inwardly compliment himself on his putting into words the way he seems to feel about Shizuo when the guy himself bursts onto the scene. The brute’s looking remarkably bleary-eyed – probably slept his way through their last class – and he’s carrying another of the lunches his brother so often makes for him._

_“Ah –”_

_He sees Izaya. Izaya grins right back up at him._

_And then, of course, they fight._

_And it’s so, so much fun – the kind of fun that doesn’t end just because one or the other player gets a little tired of the same old game._

“You’ve really changed a lot, though,” Izaya muses as he unlocks the front door of his office-apartment all the way over in Shinjuku. Shizuo leans heavily – breathing fast and hard and exhausted – into the wall beside his companion, glares balefully over at him and then follows him inside when prompted to do so.

“Yeah,” he grunts, “well, I don’t remember you ever being the type to help me through something like this.”

The way he says it – like he has something to be grateful for.

“You mean the clothes?” Izaya laughs softly, removes his own shoes and indicates with a broad gesture one of the pairs of slippers that he usually saves for guests. “No big deal, Shizu-chan. I make a lot more money than you do, anyway.”

Shizuo winces – hit a little close to home, it looks like – as he collapses to the floor and sets to work removing his black dress shoes. It’s so, so obvious that it hurts. He keeps cringing in response to every little movement, and Izaya’s standing staring down at him long before he’s even halfway finished.

“Need help?”

Shizuo shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya sighs, and lowers himself to his knees in front of Shizuo. “Move your hands.”

Shizuo’s fingers go gradually still, but his gaze is largely uncomprehending. Izaya has to force his hands away to get to the idiot’s feet, and while he’s not exactly gentle he does at least manage to get the shoes off and slippers on within a decent amount of time. Shizuo just sits there, of course – flushes and looks away, chews lightly on his lower lip and otherwise does his best to hide the embarrassment of being helped with something so basic.

“Forget about it,” Izaya hums with a little smile as he helps Shizuo to his feet. “I’m sure Shizu-chan’d do the same for me, ne?”

“D-damn flea,” Shizuo hisses, but that frown of his isn’t entirely outraged.

“Have you eaten?”

Shizuo gazes past Izaya and the walls of his apartment to something far away and unseen by anyone but himself.

He shakes his head. “Not hungry, though.”

“Have some, anyway,” Izaya insists.

Shizuo does – _they_ do – and it’s good despite being simple leftovers with not a lot to go around. Izaya lets Shizuo have the majority, and Shizuo grudgingly accepts and devours everything that’s offered to him. It makes sense, of course; anyone’d be starving after a day as strenuous as that. Anyone’d be in pain and exhausted and basically everything that Shizuo is right now.

It’s just like Shizuo to be so reluctant to accept anything that might make him feel better.

He does, however, pretty readily take the pills Izaya offers him – well, readily enough after having a look at the unopened bottle – and it should be plenty to ease the blonde’s pain for what comes next.

“Follow me, Shizu-chan,” Izaya calls – fondly, just a little, because he needs this to be pain-free and soothing in more ways than one.

“Remember, I _do_  still have some things to ask you.”

 

_Izaya’s first time is nothing special. He’s never really expected it to be, either, for in sex there’s nothing but another opportunity. Humans are interesting – especially interesting when they’re drowning themselves in pleasure, but too many see it as something that comes with trust and love._

_Izaya’s love isn’t that kind of love._

_The girl he chooses has little to offer him, but she expects next to nothing from him, either – just her love reciprocated in a purely physical way, and whether that’s really right or not doesn’t matter much to Izaya._

_It’s not the point, after all; the point is experience gained, finesse for later use and an added bit of notoriety._

_“Izaya – aah – kun,” she breathes, cups his face in her hands and looks as unbalanced as she sounds. She’s impressed, he can tell, and he’s sure he knows why. He prepared rather thoroughly, after all, but it’s a good opportunity to see what really feels best to a girl._

_Does she like it fast, slow – anticipation or gratification – little circles, biting, a combination – what?_

_It’s another kind of unraveling, Izaya decides, and it’s plenty interesting in its own way._

 

“Izaya,” Shizuo whispers, suddenly breathless as he steps past the open doorway and catches sight of the bed and Izaya’s hands already curled beneath the bottom edge of his V-neck. He stumbles back and looks ready to run, but Izaya quickly moves forward and grabs his hand where he’d held it for such a long time before.

The feel is familiar enough now for both of them, but it catches Shizuo off guard enough that Izaya can drag him without much fight over to the bed. Their slippers whisper against the floor like secrets and unkept promises – honest and conspiratorial, a contradiction in itself but Izaya doesn’t mind and he’s sure that Shizuo hasn’t even paused to appreciate it.

“Izaya, please –”

Izaya shushes him gently, pointer finger pressed to his parted lips and everything threatening gone from his expression. He can feel Shizuo’s pulse hammering where he’s holding the blonde’s wrist, but even without that the fear would be plain on his face. His eyes are wide, pupils dilated and breath coming suddenly too fast.

“Shizu-chan,” he murmurs, “you need to calm down.”

“Hell, no, Izaya, this is – this isn’t – not you, too,” he groans.

Izaya can’t help the sad smile. “Everyone wants a piece of Shizu-chan, ne?”

Shizuo closes his eyes and shakes his head again. “Don’t do this.”

“I won’t,” Izaya promises, “if you find that you really can’t enjoy it.” He pulls Shizuo into a one-armed hug, keeps the other hand on the blonde’s lips and traces the trembling contours. “Okay? I want you to try, but this time it’s all for you.”

Shizuo laughs roughly. “Y-y’know, that’s the same thing that bastard you saw before told me.”

“Just goes to show that words don’t mean much, doesn’t it, Shizu-chan?”

 _His_ words, though, these – they’re promises Izaya fully intends to keep until Shizuo no longer has any use for them. His words are a real investment backed by the blonde’s current inability to do much more than give in to things like this.

Thing is, giving in’s not exactly what Izaya wants out of Shizuo now – not easily, at least, not without a fight or some thought or contribution on this moron’s part.

“Please.”

“In this situation, wouldn’t _that_ word mean that you want me to go ahead?” Izaya wonders with an innocent smile as he pulls back to stare into Shizuo’s eyes. They’re mere centimeters away, and Shizuo’s never looked as adorable as this. Flushed pink, wide-eyed and shaking and vulnerable. It doesn’t quite suit him, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t have its own special charm.

“Izaya,” Shizuo moans – and it’s not the erotic kind, of course, but the kind that precedes tears.

“Lie down,” Izaya murmurs, and when Shizuo doesn’t he simply leans in with his palm pressed flat against the blonde’s chest. Kisses him gently as his fingers tease the buttons of his bartender uniform open so that it falls away from his chest. “See,” he whispers, “it’s not that bad.”

Shizuo blinks back infuriated tears and reaches shakily up to try to push Izaya away. It doesn’t work, but Izaya stops nevertheless – slips away and then curls up beside the blonde so that their upper bodies radiate warmth beside each other, pulls his hands back and lets his breath tickle Shizuo’s neck.

Shizuo freezes, lets his own hands fall – one extended above his head, the other curled like a cat on his chest – and turns to look Izaya in the eyes again.

He hesitates for another moment, then – “You’re done?”

Izaya smiles. “Only if you want me to be, Shizu-chan.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That _thoughtlessness is a defense mechanism; this is something different and wholly unfamiliar._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters just get longer and longer, don't they...?

When Shizuo first lays eyes on that bed big enough for two, on Izaya and when Izaya touches him with that intention – he feels for the first time that the world might really be ending for him. He can’t fight, not really, and although he wants to he’s also starting to seriously lack the resolve it would take to do anything more than plead.

He’s too messed up, and he knows it. He can’t move right or think straight and his emotions are so scattered now that he’s not even sure how he feels most of the time.

Hopeless, angry, and definitely scared. And when Izaya backs off, cuddles up beside Shizuo and leaves the decision to him – shocked.

Shocked and confused and maybe just a little bit happy.

“Let’s stop,” he whispers, and Izaya looks a little forlorn but he nods, anyway, and rolls over so that his back is facing Shizuo.

“You’re really missing out, you know,” he chuckles. “But I suppose a promise is a promise, hm?”

Shizuo maintains his silence. He’s never been particularly talkative, but only now does it strike him how little he’s actually had to say to Izaya. It’s probably because silence is safer for him these days, and certainly words have never gotten him anywhere with Izaya before, but – “Um, Izaya…”

“Mmyeah?”

“Is this all a joke for you?”

Izaya half-turns back around to look at Shizuo over his shoulder. “I wonder,” he muses. “It _is_ pretty funny, isn’t it?”

“It’s not.”

The informant’s smile reverts to the one he’s been wearing for a while now – nostalgic, sentimental – _something,_ Shizuo’s not sure what.

“Sorry, Shizu-chan. I know.”

He might as well have said that he’s completely serious, that _no, it’s not a joke, Shizu-chan_ – and Shizuo doesn’t know at all what he should do now, what he _wants_ to do now.

“Th-thanks, then,” he mumbles. “Thanks for the clothes… and the food…”

Thanks for the choice.

 

_Russia Sushi is renowned for its wide range of largely inedible dishes – never mind, either, the super intimidating guy who’s always standing out front trying to sell the stuff. The food’s sort of a legend in itself, and when you combine it with the reputation Simon boasts, you get a place like that with few regular customers and always a touch of the mysterious._

_For those who do frequent the place, though, and for the handful of repeated passersby who’ve befriended Simon, there’s something just a bit more mysterious than what the employees do in their spare time and where the food actually comes from._

_Simon’s a really weird guy._

_Yeah, he’s tall and black and Russian and his Japanese is just plain_ strange, _but that’s not everything. He’s a lot smarter than he likes to let on, and his words of wisdom go beyond the range of anything an old man with plenty of life experience might have to offer._

_For example, when Shizuo or Izaya happens by, he can always tell that they’ve been fighting – not hard to guess, maybe, but, again, there’s more._

_“Shi-zu-o, insults aren’t good, either! Fighting always bad, doesn’t matter how you do it!”_

_Shizuo pauses to glare at Simon. He might’ve just ignored him, honestly, if it hadn’t been for the fact that today’s run-in with Izaya was a little different. Nothing huge, just a few more verbal jabs than the two would usually exchange, and these particularly venomous._

_Name-calling, insults related to perceived intelligence – or lack thereof – and the cheerfully-delivered taunts only Izaya would ever have the balls to confront Shizuo with. Shizuo had responded in kind and then with a force that was a good deal more physical, but the whole thing succeeded in leaving an especially bad taste in his mouth on a day that’s sucked from the start._

_Honestly, every time that bastard opens his mouth it’s to say something infuriating. Shizuo doesn’t feel like dwelling on Simon’s ability to read into stuff like that, but it bothers him a little, regardless._

_It’s like the guy has a sixth sense or something, but –_

_“Fighting words from loved ones hurt worst of all, Shi-zu-o!”_

_– sometimes he misses the mark a little, anyway._

 

“I told you not to worry about it, didn’t I?” Izaya sighs as he moves just a little closer to Shizuo. The blonde can feel his warmth even more now, and while it’s cold in the room and he’s a little cold himself and _he needs to button his damn shirt back up,_ Izaya’s nearness can’t quite be described as comforting.

He hates that, though, because maybe it should be. Maybe this touch should make him feel _good,_ should let him forget that the man behind the warmth is his own worst enemy.

He only grunts in response to the informant’s redundant comment, but he can feel the tickle of another question wanting to be asked. He closes his eyes and focuses first on letting his body come down from its fear-ridden high – until his breathing slows, heart stops racing and the almost touching Izaya becomes just a little less unpleasant.

“I – I hate things like this,” he confesses quietly.

“Sex?” Izaya wonders.

“Well – touching,” Shizuo explains as his face rapidly heats up. “Being close, and – you.”

The informant laughs softly. “That’s not very nice, Shizu-chan.”

“If we did this…”

Izaya makes a little sound in the back of his throat but doesn’t bother interrupting Shizuo.

“If I let you do this,” Shizuo starts again, “what would happen?”

As if Orihara Izaya’s word could ever be considered trustworthy – as if Shizuo could ever expect a straight answer. It’s fuckin’ laughable, but he can’t quite handle the thought of going in blind, much as he’s starting to think he wouldn’t mind, really wouldn’t…

“You’d feel good,” Izaya murmurs.

“No – after.”

A light chuckle. “Depends. What do you want to feel, Shizu-chan?”

No answer. Shizuo doesn’t know, dammit – that’s why he’s asking, isn’t it? Because Izaya might know, or maybe because he can give Shizuo an answer that’s at least worth believing in.

“Right,” Izaya sighs after a short pause. “I guess that one’s a little too hard for you, ne? Then how about this?” He sits up, leans way over Shizuo and smiles down at him like he knows everything in the world. Shizuo stares right back up, eyes frozen wide and the lump in his throat turning to a strange sort of heat in his cheeks and chest.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya purrs, leans in for a kiss and stops maybe a millimeter away from the blonde’s lips. “I think we’ll have plenty of time in the future to make it perfect, don’t you?”

Shizuo flushes darker and darker and so _hot…_ “Th-then” – he swallows painfully – “this – we’ll do this again? Not just once?”

“Of course,” Izaya chuckles, and every little gust of his hot breath against Shizuo’s face feels like a bucketful of ice-cold water. “Shizu-chan, I’d like to say that you’re not a tool to me, but I’m sure you know otherwise. I just don’t see the point in throwing a perfectly good one away.”

A – a tool.

Well, if that isn’t just like Orihara Izaya, after all.

Shizuo grins for the first time in he doesn’t know how long, closes the negligible distance between himself and Izaya and presses his lips to the informant’s. He’s not sure what to do from there, really – should he move, should he open his mouth or use his teeth? – but the soft heat is already permission granted and Izaya knows _exactly_ what to do with it.

 

_The bastards who come to see Shizuo at the bar don’t often prep him properly before laying into him – and why should they, anyway, when they’re only there to satisfy their own bodies’ needs? Shizuo’s just a tool to them, but worse than that is the fact that he’s not even a valuable enough tool to be kept up well. If he breaks, fine – the boss’ll just find another like him, and he won’t be missed. No one’d even be likely to remember his name, and certainly no one gives a damn about his discomfort._

_That’s how it’s going to be this time; Shizuo can tell just as soon as his guest’s clammy hands tentacle their way to his unguarded body – skip the shirt, of course, and straight to the top of his pants._

_The guy looks like a kid opening a Christmas present – minus the innocent excitement of not knowing what’s inside, of course._

_“On your back,” he grunts, and when Shizuo doesn’t immediately obey he forces him down himself, shoves his legs apart and touches him shamelessly – not erotically, either, but just like a potential buyer examining a horse. Touches himself, too, pumps the growing swell of his cock and leers down at Shizuo with every one of his intentions made very plain by the glitter in his eyes._

_The touch is rough, but Shizuo flushes with shame as he feels his cock swelling fast and he’s just as fucked-up as ever, apparently, because for all that the man’s shoving inside him hurts it also manages to draw a euphoric moan from the lowest part of his throat._

_“Louder,” the man groans as his stiff bulk stirs against Shizuo’s tightening walls. “Louder – ahh – cry more, come on –”_

_Shizuo does, whimpers and moans and shudders as pain wracks his body from one end to the other. He comes quickly, tears streaking his cheeks before he knows what he’s doing – showing emotion in front of this sick bastard, dammit, showing a part of himself he’d so much rather keep hidden – and his face and chest are soaked and sticky within seconds of the ordeal’s beginning._

_“Damn whore,” the man swears, and like so many before him he doesn’t let up even as Shizuo – spent already, 2 fucks into the day and hurting and hurting and hurting – yelps and tries to escape by clenching the muscles of his ass, by squirming and pushing at the man’s hands – to no avail, of course._

_“Stop,” he pants. Not often that he actually manages to put his distaste into words, but that’s because it’s never helped him, never will._

_The thrusting continues full-force even as the man snarls furiously and sinks his hammy fist into the soft flesh of the blonde’s exposed stomach._

Shizuo’s chest is riddled with bruises. He knows – he’s seen them – and he knows without having to look that they’ve only become darker and more numerous after his nightful of punishment.

It’s humiliating.

It’s not that he wants to show Izaya perfect skin, creamy and pale the way Izaya himself is, but then again – the difference is especially striking with the informant shirtless beside him, and that difference is a symbol in Shizuo’s eyes. It says everything Shizuo hasn’t, tells every story and answers every question that Izaya has yet to ask.

He’s weak. He’s everyone’s bitch and that’s because he’s too pathetic to fight back. He’s let himself become someone’s punching bag, which of course makes it his fault that just about any form of human contact equals pure agony for his mind and body.

He’s as broken as he looks.

“Some time tonight, Shizu-chan,” Izaya teases quietly. He’s pointedly eyeing Shizuo’s belt, but even so it takes the blonde a moment to fully comprehend the intention behind the gaze.

He hesitates.

“It – looks bad, Izaya,” he sighs. He has to work to ignore the heat of his face flushing, because just how petty must he sound right now? Like some teenaged girl or – or he doesn’t even know, but it’s not like him and he knows it. Knows that Izaya may not understand what’s really wrong with those marks.

“I don’t care,” Izaya says, and there’s a note of real surprise in his voice. “They’ll heal, anyway.”

“They won’t have time to,” Shizuo mumbles.

Izaya blinks, understanding, then shakes his head and removes the belt and Shizuo’s pants for him. He has to shift back between the blonde’s legs and then farther away as he slips them down, and Shizuo – slams his eyes shut, reaches down and makes sure that his boxers, at least, stay where they’re supposed to.

“Those, too,” Izaya murmurs.

He knows. He knows, but he has to make sure first. He opens his eyes, glances down and sees Izaya looking not at the bruises, not at the angry red marks or the obvious hand prints but at Shizuo himself – his eyes, his lips, the tears –

He’s crying?

“Dammit,” he hisses, reaching up to swipe at his eyes again. “Dammit, I can’t –”

“Shizu-chan, are you sure about this?”

He sounds so much like he doubts Shizuo. Not impatient, but exasperated – as though Shizuo had been the one to suggest this in the first place, the bastard – “Yeah, I’m sure,” he growls, “and anyway, it was your idea, flea.”

“Insults like that won’t mean much as long as you’re crying like a baby, Shizu-chan,” Izaya smiles.

Shizuo shakes his head, wills himself upright and clumsily wipes away the few beads of moisture that have yet to make it past his eyelashes. He removes the final layer of his clothing deliberately, gaze locked with Izaya’s and he’s scared but he feels a little like he’ll lose if he can’t at least do this much.

“I mean it,” he whispers, but it’s no use – his mouth feels like it’s all stuffed with cotton. His words come out undefined, soft and formless like his resolve. “I – just hurry, okay? Take yours off, too…”

Izaya chuckles. “You’re funny, Shizu-chan.”

He does, though, and it almost hurts, how flawless he is – unbruised, unscarred, soft and firm and strong. He’s maybe a little smaller than Shizuo – even down there, and funny how even after everything he’s done and had done to him Shizuo’s almost too timid to look – but he more than makes up for that with king-like confidence as he pushes Shizuo back onto the bed again, kisses him slow and hard and messy. Shizuo’s more than a little startled by the intensity, by Izaya’s tongue in his mouth and his lips gently forceful and the foreignness of it all.

That doesn’t keep him from kissing back.

 

_“Weird question,” Tom warns with a raised-eyebrow smile that’s not entirely meant to convey humor._

_Shizuo spares him a quick wayward glance as he brings another cigarette close to his lips and lights it expertly. The sun’s going down, streets still crowded and the sky perfectly cloudless._

_A nice night._

_“Try me,” Shizuo allows without smiling. He’s not big on weird questions, after all, but it’s Tom-san and this is nothing more than a relaxed conversation between friends – nothing meant to hurt or judge._

_“Have you ever lost it?”_

_When Shizuo gives him a confused look, the debt collector elaborates – “You know, really lost it. Like, forgetting the time and place. Not thinking at all. Have you ever been that mad?”_

_Shizuo shrugs, thinks only briefly and knows the answer without having to search for it. Doesn’t matter, anyway – Tom-san already knows him, after all, knows what he is and what he’s capable of. It’s just a question, just a conversation, just simple curiosity and Shizuo’s tired enough today that the line between irritation and rage is slightly thicker than normal, anyway._

_Or, more to the point, it’s kinda amazing that Tom doesn’t quite get it yet._

_“All the damn time,” Shizuo admits. Tom-san starts to deny that it could possibly be that bad, but Shizuo shakes his head and adds, “No, really. When people piss me off, that’s just – that’s all, y’know?”_

_Tom does – or doesn’t, maybe, but that’s really just par for the course._

_Monsters are like that, sometimes – hard to read, hard to really ‘get.’_

_Anomalies._

_Things like that don’t need arbitrary stuff like thought or control, do they?_

“I’m going to touch you now, Shizu-chan,” Izaya murmurs, shifts back and shows Shizuo his hands, dainty fingers and looks for permission.

“Y-yeah.”

Izaya’s smile returns again, but now it’s slow and small and his breath tickles Shizuo’s chest as he leans in, kisses his collarbone and massages the sides of his upper body – up-down, up-down, little squeezing motions and a heat that gets Shizuo’s blood pumping faster. The tickle turns to a tight pressure, and from there it becomes the dull throb of lust.

“Wow – already, Shizu-chan?” Izaya chuckles.

Shizuo’s demand for the informant to shut up somehow gets lost and comes out sounding like a needy whimper. Izaya’s hands are holding his nipples, now, twisting them and pinching so that it hurts and the twinge of pain is mirrored by the twitching of Shizuo’s hardening erection. It’s all very slow, very deliberate and methodical – like Izaya, maybe – and that somehow makes his body want speed, fever.

“Fas – faster,” he groans.

“On these, you mean?” Izaya wonders, and with a mischievous grin he gives Shizuo’s nipples an especially rough jerk – rough enough that Shizuo can’t help crying out, rough enough that his cock jerks and throbs harder as a bit of precum leaks out and starts to drip tantalizingly down his length.

It tickles, dammit – “Fuck –”

“Is that what you want, now? My, my, Shizu-chan’s actually very honest, after all.”

“Izaya – ngh – please –”

Izaya’s left hand abandons Shizuo’s aching nipple, slips down to rest painfully close to his cock and with his lips and teeth he fills the void of touch. He doesn’t so much as graze Shizuo’s erection, but he does ease Shizuo’s legs apart with his fingers feeling the hot flush of his inner thigh.

“You want more, don’t you?”

Shizuo grunts and rocks his hips forward so that Izaya’s hand shifts just slightly higher. His eyes burn and sting – humiliation, definitely, ‘cause what the hell is he doing? He’s not thinking, but it’s different from the blankness of late-night fucks in a dirty bar. _That_ thoughtlessness is a defense mechanism; this is something different and wholly unfamiliar.

That’s why he’s blushing so hard, dammit, because _Orihara Izaya_ happens to be the one making him feel like this.

“You do,” Izaya chuckles, answering his own question – what was it, again? – and then he leans close, grins and murmurs, “but you’re going to have to do better than that, Shizu-chan. Tell me _explicitly.”_

Shizuo whimpers. “Nnngh – t-touch me – _Izaya –”_

“Here?”

Shizuo gasps, shudders. “More, more – ahh –”

“And?”

“Put – put your cock inside,” he whispers. “I – I want it – you…”

Izaya looks – well, Shizuo’s not sure anymore because his eyes have already come crashing shut, but he thinks he can feel – hear, sense, he doesn’t quite know, never does – the smile somewhere above him as the sharp _pop_ of a tube of lubricant opening washes over him like _almost there almost enough._ His body strains for more contact, and to occupy himself he reaches up and tries to replicate Izaya’s ministrations on his already-sore nipples.

“It’s no use,” Izaya purrs as he presses a single cold digit to the very edge of Shizuo’s ring of muscles. It contracts reflexively as Shizuo shivers, but Izaya doesn’t wait to press his way fully inside.

“I’m the expert here, after all.”

And Shizuo is struck, then, by how little he’d expected Izaya to be as gentle as he is – demanding in his own way, sure, but no, this is almost frighteningly easy and Shizuo is almost frighteningly relaxed. He’s even able to keep himself from clenching the muscles of his ass as the number of fingers increases until his back is arching and his cock weeping freely. He moans and grunts and twitches with every additional centimeter of give, but the panic from before is all gone.

“Ready?”

Shizuo doesn’t open his eyes, but he nods and even smiles. “Do it.”

Izaya’s cock is just as slick as his fingers when it fills Shizuo, but it lacks much of that shocking coolness. It’s lukewarm and it only gets warmer, hotter, as Izaya shivers right up against Shizuo, holds his upper arms down and then uses them to gain leverage for the first thrust.

“Ahh, Shizu-chan, you’re surprisingly tight,” he sighs happily as he shifts his weight – testing the boundaries, growing accustomed to Shizuo – and then angles down to meet that perfect, sensitive spot so that Shizuo jerks, throws his head back and moans like he’s never felt anything better in his life.

“Nice reaction,” Izaya grunts as he pulls almost completely out again.

“P-please more,” Shizuo whimpers. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t even care how needy he sounds, and for all that Izaya must be terribly amused by that, he’s very quick to oblige.

Quick friction, lewd, wet sliding sounds and the thrum of Shizuo’s blood roaring in his ears. The bed shaking, his muscles spasming as he writhes and squirms and bucks into and away from and – and it’s good, it’s the best thing ever.

This and the bar – they’re different worlds. Here, Shizuo doesn’t need control, doesn’t need fear or shame or strength. Doesn’t need to deal with the bad sort of pain or the weight of his failures. Doesn’t even need to worry about being more or less human than anyone else, because here – here he’s probably not, anyway.

Monster, tool – it hardly matters.

Right now, he _loves_ Izaya for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Update:** I'm really sorry, guys, but it's looking like I won't be able to finish another chapter before leaving tomorrow morning. I'll be gone from then (June 22nd) until July 13th, and absolutely no Internet access (or English, so I won't even be able to rough-draft anything T_T).
> 
> I can guarantee that this story will be completed as soon as I can continue working on it, though, because I haven't lost interest or anything like that; the hiatus is just unavoidable because real life obligations (yuck). I hope you'll wait for me, anyway, and thank you so so much for reading the things that I write!!!
> 
> “ヽ(´▽｀)ノ”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s a tool because Izaya enjoys him. If he breaks, fine. If Izaya can stop it, better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third story I've updated since returning from my three-week school. I'm sorry it's taken so long, but here we are at last! Thank you so much to everyone who's read, commented, left kudos - and of course, if you're still waiting five or six additional days past the original deadline, I totally owe you Internet cookies!

Izaya’s been dishing out all manner of favors for a good number of years now, but he’s never been thanked quite so fervently for anything in his life. He’s never seen anyone look quite that frankly _good_ in the throes of climax, and he’s never thought of sex as more a pastime than a process.

Shizuo does all of that for Izaya without even really trying. The look on his face as he comes – flushed, eyes half-closed so that his eyelashes cast dark shadows and his lips parting wider to take deep breaths – is enough on its own to draw an incredible orgasm out of Izaya, too, but maybe the most pleasurable part comes after.

Izaya’s seen plenty of people “melt,” after all, but Shizuo is, without a doubt, _beyond_ adorable. His back arches for his most extreme moment of pleasure, but he goes completely limp just as soon as the euphoria starts to fade. He lets his eyes fall shut, then, smiles softly and his head turns to one side with uncut blonde tickling his forehead.

He exposes his neck to Izaya, lets his chest rise and fall as it will.

When Izaya pulls slowly out and then collapses heavily onto his chest, he doesn’t complain. He doesn’t even open his eyes when Izaya kisses his neck, but his heart does beat noisily enough that Izaya can feel and almost hear it. It’s a stirring in the air, electricity in his veins and Shizuo plainly feeling the same.

A short shiver runs up and down the blonde’s back. “Was that,” he whispers, and stops to wet his lips with the soft pink of his tongue.

“Was it…?”

“Um – o-okay?”

Izaya has to take a moment to fully understand what Shizuo’s asking him – _Was it okay, did it feel good, was it worth your time and do you still want to do it again…? –_ and of course he mentally congratulates himself for a job well done, the implication that Shizuo, at least, liked it, and it’s funny, too, because…

“…Shizu-chan, you’re selling yourself just a bit short, don’t you think?”

 Shizuo opens his eyes – misty and dark and somehow warm at the same time – and furrows his brow slightly.

“Do I…?” He glances shyly back up at his partner, extra-flushed and Izaya can feel his heart reach some kind of breakneck pace. Shizuo’s frown doesn’t disappear even as he quickly adds, “W-wait, so you – you thought it was good, too?”

Izaya grins. “I’m flattered that you’re so concerned about my personal enjoyment.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says. Normally, it’d probably have come out sounding like a growl, but now it’s more like a sigh. The idiot sounds like he’s falling half-asleep already. “I just – I need to know for my own reasons.”

 _I bet,_ Izaya thinks wryly, but he doesn’t actually say anything right away. He considers wondering aloud whether Shizuo’s ever been told how good he looks by anyone at the bar, but – well, there are plenty of reasons not to go there. That place is something of an unspoken taboo here, anyway, and in any case compliments from people like those couldn’t possibly make Shizuo happy – couldn’t possibly make _anyone_ happy, not being little better than the crooning of a dog’s owner…

After a moment, the informant settles for pressing his lips to the sharp line of Shizuo’s collarbone, turning his head so that his hair tickles the blonde’s neck and – “If it’s any consolation,” he whispers, “I actually _like_ being around you, Shizu-chan.”

 

_It’s incredibly amusing and adorable at the same time, the sheer volume of theories and stories revolving about the single pivot of Orihara Izaya, infamous and guiltless and dangerous. That his humans so strongly desire a more complete understanding of him, and then of course the comic quality of just about everything they have to say._

_‘He’s not human – no, really, like the headless rider!’_

_‘…a friend of mine heard that he killed his parents when he was still in grade school.’_

_‘And get this – he keeps their heads locked up in his office!’_

_‘Scaaarrryyy~~!’_

_It has been said, hasn’t it, that there’s often a hint of truth to gossip and petty rumors? Izaya loves that – like dangling a thread just out of reach, teasing and playing with an inquisitive bunch of pets and they never fail to entertain him fully. He’s been allegedly killed off any number of times – hit by cars, turned into a stain by Heiwajima Shizuo, shot stabbed raped_ everything _and he never gets tired of contributing to the confusion._

_‘He committed suicide yesterday!’_

_‘Spends a lot of time on suicide forums, doesn’t he? Bet he was looking for ideas!’_

_‘Jumped off a building – Tokyo Tower!’_

_‘Come on. It was a train, a train. Ikebukuro station. Wasn’t anyone there with me?’_

_‘A truck!’_

_‘So it was an accident?’_

_‘No, he was attacked~!’_

_‘Yakuza?’_

_‘More like someone who knew the slasher.’_

_‘Why not the slasher himself?’_

_‘He stuffed his head in an oven! I read the medical report at the hospital!’_

_‘Cancer!’_

_Izaya grins as he types something about drug overdoses and underground deals. Within an hour, he’s created an entire circle of shady characters and dirty money, but the moment the topic starts to shift, he’s on it – not dead but in hiding, dead but coming back, dead but only because he never really existed to begin with…_

_There’s his love life – nothing as complex or interesting as it’s so often made out to be, but that, too, can be spiced up as Izaya sees fit._

_Of course, there are also times when it’s better to just let discussions like those move forward as their perpetrators see fit._

_‘He just got engaged to some politician’s daughter~! They were even together at a café earlier today!!’_

_‘No way, no way! Everyone knows Orihara Izaya’s into guys!’_

_‘Maybe he’s not into anyone. Like, I can totally see him staying alone for the rest of his life.’_

_‘Duh – he’s a fucking sociopath!’_

_‘What about – ’_

_There’s a fine line between hate and love. The red strings of fate, people made for each other, destiny love letters home-made chocolate and infatuation born of fights-to-the-death. Izaya’s heard it all. It’s as funny as the rest of the gossip to which he is subjected, but it’s less grounded in reason and more the product of teenaged girls with nothing better to do than fantasize about men in love._

_‘What about – ’_

_‘ – Heiwajima Shizuo – ’_

_He accepts it all as the feeble thought process of a collective, of course, but that doesn’t mean that his mind isn’t relatively open…_

They fall asleep like that mere moments later, it seems, and when Izaya opens his eyes again it’s to find that half the night – the _rest_ of it – has already come and gone unnoticed. Shizuo’s lying awake mere centimeters away, soft brown eyes relatively bright where the feeble morning sunlight hits them in just the right way.

“About before,” he says slowly, and to Izaya it looks as though the blonde is cautiously tasting the words as they roll off of his tongue. “I guess… I’m not sure what to do with this.”

“Celebrate?” Izaya suggests with a slow smirk. He’s not a bad catch, either.

Shizuo sighs impatiently. “Tell me what it is,” he demands in that tragically naïve way of his. He’s blushing.

“Ever try anger management classes, Shizu-chan?”

The blonde looks slightly taken aback, but he nods sheepishly, anyway.

Figures.

“It’s like that. Lessons and medicine all rolled up into one. Sound good?”

“How does that work?” Shizuo wonders half-irritably.

Izaya takes his sweet time answering. He stretches, first, and as he brings his hands back he makes sure that one of them brushes the soft – _he can see an old bruise healing there, too_ – tip of Shizuo’s right ear. The brute’s reaction is muted but immediate – he flushes slightly, swallows back quiet sound and lets his own hand ghost over the tingling patch of skin.

It’s truly gratifying, seeing that in response to the simplest of contact. Shizuo’s really a natural.

“Just like that,” Izaya jokes at barely above a whisper. “It’d be a waste for someone as cute as you to hate being touched. Of course, if _this”_ – he reaches back up to card his hand gently through Shizuo’s hair, and without seemingly intending to the blonde exhales contentment – “is any indication, Shizu-chan, I don’t think I’ll have to worry.”

“I do hate it,” Shizuo disagrees. “It’s different with – ”

“Me?” Izaya guesses knowingly.

“…Yeah,” Shizuo grumbles reluctantly. “I – guess I like it, sort of. Everything else, though – just – it’s…” The blonde struggles to come up with the right word. The room goes back to being quiet.

“…I hate it,” he decides at length. “That’s all.”

“You’re being raped,” Izaya bluntly points out, and Shizuo winces. Averts his eyes. Ashamed.

“I’m so– ”

Izaya stops him with a finger pressed close to his lips. “That’s not something to apologize for, idiot. I’m not looking to keep you all to myself, anyway, and I’m not about to solve your problem for you, either.”

Shizuo doesn’t look even remotely disappointed. He’s probably known this all along.

“You think you’re stuck,” Izaya notes after another moment passes without words. Shizuo doesn’t argue with that, so Izaya continues, “Without that freedom, Shizu-chan, you _need_ this. That’s the difference between you and me. I only want it. You – _you_ depend on it.”

Shizuo frowns. “I don’t fucking need you, bastard. It was a choice – still is.”

“I’m not denying you that, of course,” Izaya soothes. “But you want it. Me. And the pleasure I derive from something as simple as your presence practically verges on exhilarating for you. If this is the best you’ll ever feel, why deny it its place as a basic need?”

“What changed _you,_ then?” Shizuo wonders in between slow, deep breaths and heartbeats. He doesn’t comment on Izaya’s long-winded explanation, but whether that indicates acceptance or confusion is a mystery even to Izaya.

“I appreciate your gratitude,” the informant answers with the trained ease of fluid speech, “and you’ve lost your strength, anyway. You look human to me now, Shizu-chan, and I did say it before – you’re also a tool.”

“Planning something…?” Shizuo wonders. He sounds significantly less interested than he probably should.

“Life’s boring without you,” Izaya chuckles. “If you’re going to die, at least do it dramatically. I won’t allow anything less.”

“I’m not dying.”

No, he’s not. He’s hurting inside and out, but the only thing dying is the part of him that makes him hot and cold and monstrous. Not his anger, but the nerve that lets him feel it – yes, that and pleasure, passion. He’s briefly human, now, and even at his lowest he’d be more human than the towering hulk he once was, but – _but –_

He’s a tool because Izaya enjoys him. The wet heat of his body and the charms of his face with its new expressions. If he breaks, fine. If Izaya can stop it, better.

He wants to see the fight return to Shizuo’s eyes.

“Of course not,” he says aloud. “I’d never allow that.”

 

_It’s an old memory, and it’s not that it hurts so much as that Izaya simply has no further use for it._

_His mother’s come home late again, but it’s always with a touch of warmth and she likes to bring gifts for him and for his sisters – stuffed animals, postcards and snacks. Little things. He’s not sure where she gets them, if or how she travels and exactly what for. She says work. Their dad is always working. There’s nothing, really, to prove it._

_He’s always thought that the same could be said of their love, but even that’s not straight-up black and white. Nothing is. He’s not suffering from any trauma, not exactly spiraling into delinquency in the same way that other kids in his position do._ He’s _organized. Independent. Special, even._

_The same could be said of his family._

_His mother is a beautiful woman, dark haired like him, like his father and like his sisters. They are a family more in name and physical appearance than in action or feeling._

_(He’s really okay with that, although to be honest it’s taken some time…)_

_“You’ve grown so much,” she notices – quiet like the city, hushed and there’s always a secret wrapped up in her minimalistic utterances. She looks tired, but never tired enough to justify her absence._

_“Thanks,” he responds politely. He’s holding her latest gift – sushi, she explains, and a quick taste tells him that it’s actually pretty good. The word of gratitude is a response to that rather than to her sentimental comment._

_“And you’ve been – ”_

_“ – taking care of Mairu and Kururi,” he interrupts with a sly grin. “They’re in bed, but should I wake them…?”_

_“They haven’t eaten yet?” She sounds surprised._

_“Said they weren’t hungry.”_

_“I – see,” she struggles for a moment, looking conflicted and it’s the warmth that she wants but is too clumsy to give or receive. “I think it’s fine, then, don’t you? Let’s eat together, now – just the two of us, Izaya.”_

_He hates that – his name on her lips. She doubts herself too much._

_“Sure,” he agrees with a quick smile, and what follows is neither dinner nor socialization._

_It’s an act. It means nothing._

_“Thanks,” she tells him as he finishes and drags his tired, almost-ten-year-old self off to bed. She’s mimicking him, he thinks – his earlier one-word response, devoid of emotion and reality – but that’s fine, too, and he really doesn’t mind seeing this woman, his mother, every once in a while. Doesn’t mind this falsified closeness._

_He’s using it to grow. He’s becoming the person he’ll one day love being. Carving a future out of scraps and lies. It’s ugly, but he’s good enough to make it beautiful._

_“Thanks, yourself,” he calls. It’s the cheeky response of a child struggling to become an adult. Maybe it amuses her. Maybe it hurts._

_He doesn’t care either way._

_He sees her plenty of times after that, too, but their silent dinner and the weight of misunderstanding never fades from the cramped corners of his broad mind._

Shizuo leaves with his hair wet, cheeks flushed and a promise to meet Izaya again “either tonight or tomorrow, I guess, but I’m kinda likely to be late for work today, so…”

Izaya knows what he means. Minor infractions are a danger to Shizuo. The next time they see each other, the bruises will have multiplied. Something may be genuinely broken, casted up and in a sling.

It’s almost laughable, but the informant lets it go, anyway, because the look in Shizuo’s eyes is begging him not to offer a car or a call. No excuses, no attention. He’s taking enough from this deal as it is.

“Where’ll it be?” Shizuo wonders quietly. His expression is unreadable as he leans into the doorway and expects an answer.

Izaya doesn’t give it a second thought.

“Right here, Shizu-chan. I’ll be waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I’ve seen a lot of people in this fandom play with the idea that Izaya’s parents are/were negligent, abusive, non-existent, etc. (Who hasn’t?) I’m honestly not sure that I like fics with a heavy focus on that, but it fits this story well enough that I decided to include it as an additional theme, anyway.
> 
>  
> 
> (Never mind that, not having read the light novels, I can’t really be sure whether or not it’s legitimate canon or just fandom head-canon, anyway.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _That longing won’t take the pain away while it’s happening – won’t even slow it down or make it tolerable, really – but it’s probably the only thing that’s gonna keep Shizuo sane._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's uh... it's literally been more than a month since I last updated, hasn't it? I am so sorry about that! There was a lot going on, and then I wanted to finish at least one ongoing fic before coming back to focus on all of them. I'll do my best from here on out, too. Even with college applications and things, it shouldn't take me another month to update again!
> 
> Unimportantly, I'm also gonna leave a link [here](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/7382.html?thread=25108438#t25108438) for the continuation of this fic on the kink meme's part 11 overflow post. It's mostly just for reference, though; I'll simultaneously post updates right here on ao3 just as I have been doing!

Shizuo doesn’t start to feel panicked until he finds himself alone and unsupported in the empty elevator of Orihara Izaya’s apartment building. It’s only in the informant’s absence that his mind finds space to wander, after all, and even wandering it endlessly returns to dwell on the glow of his touch and his voice and gentle words.

It keeps reminding him just how much he’ll miss that in the long hours standing between himself and more of Izaya.

His mind coasts along at eighty miles an hour.

It was a long walk last night, and as tired and achy as Shizuo still is, he’s _sure_ to be really late no matter how fast he tries to limp his way back to the bar – which is another thing he can’t stop thinking about, actually, the fact that pain is the price for this, that loyalty is impossible and that he’s pathetic pitiful and an idiot for willingly relying on his enemy like this.

It’s going to hurt. Every moment of physical and mental agony is going to be another moment spent yearning for smug smirks and Izaya’s strong presence. That longing won’t take the pain away while it’s happening – won’t even slow it down or make it tolerable, really – but it’s probably the only thing that’s gonna keep Shizuo sane.

Never mind that that in itself is a frightening prospect – the fact that he really does feel like he needs to worry about his own mental stability. He’s fucked it up so bad already that there’s just no way things’ll ever turn out well and that _terrifies_ him.

When he finally has to stop to buy himself another pack of calm-down-breathe-deep-and-forget cigarettes, his hands are shaking so much that he drops his wallet the second he manages to get it out of his pocket.

“Shit,” he hisses, bending over to pick it up and the old guy waiting for him asks him if he’s okay – drunk, maybe, he guesses and Shizuo probably doesn’t have half as much control over the steadiness of his voice as he’d like to so he doesn’t bother arguing.

He pays. He keeps walking.

It’s cold out today, too, but the mid-morning sun – been a little while, hasn’t it – has plenty of people out on the streets. It’s not enough to increase Shizuo’s anxiety by a whole lot, but it certainly doesn’t help a damn thing. He attracts more attention the farther he gets – not more than usual even now, maybe, but there are rumors going around and people are curious.

Can’t he fight anymore? Did he finally get over that temper of his? Is he sick or hurt or struggling with something else entirely?

“Shizuo – hey! Shizuo!”

That voice…

He feels himself pale as he turns to face it and the happily surprised smile he knows is gonna be there to match. White and breathless and that damn shaking that just won’t _stop,_ he wants to run but that’s not even an option.

Not just because he couldn’t hope to get away, but also because he could never do that to Tom-san.

 

 _“It was_ what _now?” Tom wonders, wide-eyed and leaning close to catch a repeat of Shizuo’s hastily-delivered explanation._

_Shizuo takes a deep breath and focuses hard on letting it go slowly. He’ll fly off the handle again if he doesn’t work hard not to, after all, and besides that he needs a minute to collect his thoughts for a second attempt._

_“I mean…” he starts, but his voice cracks and he has to glare frustratedly down at the table until he can be sure that his boss won’t go out of his way to ask for him to try talking again._

_Tom doesn’t, just waits and doesn’t even have to try to look coolly concerned. Friendly. No pressure._

_Shizuo can’t fight. He’s not over his temper. He’s not even sick or hurt or anything like that, but he_ is _an idiot and that’s pretty much what counts. He’s losing his dangerous reputation, after all, and that coupled with pure inability is already making this job less and less plausible. It’s his fault because he chose it and he’s almost too weak to admit it to one of the people who most need to know._

_He’s already starting to hate himself, honestly, but every step of this whole ordeal seems to have come with a strict ‘no take-backs’ policy. As things stand now, it’s all he can do to put forth his best effort as everything cracks and crumbles around him. It’s all he can do not to make the damage worse – and that’s minus the strength he’s always been so accustomed to having._

_“Look, I… I kinda took Shinra up on something – like, a medicine – I guess, only it made me…”_

_He pauses. Struggles. Tom-san eyes him calmly, but now there’s a slight crease between his eyebrows that indicates less serenity and more confusion._

_Shizuo reaches up to bat at the air as he glances away. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Didn’t mean to make it such a big deal…”_

_Tom smiles sympathetically. “Don’t worry about it, Shizuo. You know it wouldn’t even be a problem if it didn’t have so much to do with work. I mean, I sort of feel bad asking.”_

_Shizuo nods, but he doesn’t quite dare to look back up at his sempai. Swallowing hard so that it actually hurts his throat a little, he manages to repeat one of his earlier confessions – the ones said fast and quiet enough that he could hope that Tom hadn’t heard or understood the words._

_“I – I can’t fight anymore.”_

_Tom’s frown is evident in his voice, but Shizuo finally turns back to see it, anyway. “You know you don’t have to fight.”_

_“I can’t protect you,” Shizuo tries. “And – it doesn’t matter. No one’ll take me serious…”_

_“Why would –”_

_“My strength,” Shizuo interrupts. “It’s gone, Tom-san. I – I can’t – dammit, I don’t even know, I just –”_

_Tom chuckles – and that’s why Shizuo stops talking, of course, because laughter isn’t at all like what he’s been waiting for – before leaning way back in his chair._

_By extension, it’s like he’s also moving away from Shizuo._

_“That’s almost too hard to believe, y’know – even for you.”_

_“Sorry,” Shizuo states again._

_Tom shakes his head as he reaches up to adjust his glasses. “I won’t say I understand, but I can’t exactly complain.”_

_Shizuo desperately wants to look away again, but he resists just long enough to ask Tom what he means by not understanding._

_“Well, you’ve lived with that for a long time, haven’t you? Guess I would’ve assumed that you’d know by now just how much you needed it to get by.”_

_Seeing the dejected look on his kohai’s face as he gradually soaks up the implication of what he’s just said, Tom sighs and leans close again. “Look, don’t worry about it, really. I’ll definitely miss having you around, but I doubt anyone could blame you for wanting out of all that…”_

_All that – what, like worrying about breaking people and things and all the fear and enemies and loneliness?_

_“I should’ve thought it through more. I can’t even pretend that I didn’t think it was gonna work…”_

_“Still sounds pretty improbable to me,” Tom decides, and then he grins amiably. “Y’know, there might be something else for you – filing papers or something, I mean.”_

_It’s Shizuo’s turn to laugh, albeit somewhat forlornly._

_“Nah, but thanks, anyway…”_

_It doesn’t suit him, he says. That’s all._

_Uneasy, not tense but vaguely nostalgic and riddled with regret. They’re breaking up a routine and a friendship that’s already stuttered to a near stop once. It feels like no going back now, though, and every word either of them forces out from that moment on is nothing more than a just-heard whispering of too much too fast and –_

_– and it’s gone._

_When Tom-san smiles and waves and tells Shizuo that they’ll have to meet up again sometime, the blonde gets this sinking feeling (like he’d like to drown, really would but he can’t do that despite the fact that he’s been sinking slowly for a while now) in his stomach and doesn’t answer loudly enough to be heard even by himself._

Shizuo slows to an obedient stop as the older man joins him at a jog. _He looks so left-behind,_ Shizuo thinks, but that’s only because he’s so obviously and completely oblivious to everything that’s gone on with Shizuo. It’s been too long, too many days of routinized despair and Tom’s not a part of that in Shizuo’s mind. He’s an alien presence, a calm one. Normal.

It’s almost impossible to imagine Tom imagining Shizuo as being at least as content as he was before. In Tom’s mind, the blonde could even be happy now – no property damage, no unwanted fights or suspicion. Good job, good friends, freedom. Relaxation.

Everything Shizuo wanted and thought he could have when he said yes months ago.

Even Shinra has some vague notions. Even Celty…

_And then there’s Izaya._

Shizuo banishes that last thought with a brisk shake of his head before Tom has a chance to do anything more than clap a hand to his shoulder. The blonde even manages to catch himself before he lets the pain of the light blow show on his face – bruises everywhere, after all, and if he was sore last night he’s practically dying now.

Tom raises an eyebrow at him.

“Tired? Should I assume that means you found another job?”

Shizuo shrugs and stares down at the pavement in front of both of them. He starts walking again, too, and Tom follows without a second thought.

Why’s it starting to feel like no one’s ever willing to leave Shizuo alone anymore?

And – well, it’s not that he wants that, no, but it’s like – and he doesn’t really wanna think about it, either, but –

– it’s just –

– that he might not actually deserve the attention?

He shivers. “Good seeing you again,” he whispers, but his voice wavers and he can feel the familiar threat of tears hanging over him and sticking in his throat.

Tom shifts his attention back up from the street – he’s been staring off in that direction for a while, not because he’s preoccupied but because he’s just that good at being casually aloof – to look directly at Shizuo. He’s frowning again, but this time he doesn’t say anything for another several beats of shoes tapping pavement and the soft rustling of clothing.

Then – “You really don’t look good, man. Sure you’re doing okay?”

Shizuo shakes his head. “Guess not,” he admits, but he’s quick to add, “not your fault, though. I just – y’know, ‘m tired. Like you said.”

Tom’s response – ‘ _right’_ – is appropriately sarcastic and disturbingly well-timed. Shizuo knows just how transparent he is, but that doesn’t make the shock any less when his boss stares right up and _into_ him, all determined to know and determined to help and it’s _pointless._

“Sorry,” he hears himself rasping, and again – “Sorry.”

“You say that too much, you know?” Tom notes, and Shizuo is reminded again of their last meeting.

He doesn’t think of it as a great parting – not even good, really, and definitely not anything to be remembered fondly. The thing about that, though, is that it was still a kind of closure. It was an ending, and from there Tom could have gone on knowing nothing of Shizuo’s eventual fate. He’d’ve remembered Shizuo as purely weak and devoid of the will he used to have, but at least it wouldn’t’ve been as bad as this.

Shizuo doesn’t want to be seen like this any more than he wants Tom-san to have to see it.

“I – I haffta go,” he says.

Tom’s frown deepens. “Mind if I walk with you a bit? Hate to say it, Shizuo, but you’ve kinda got me worried.”

Shizuo shakes his head wildly from side to side. The movement hurts.

“Leaving,” he reiterates. “Maybe later.”

He abandons Tom like that, stunned into stillness with a hand extended in the blonde’s general direction. He looks more hurt than anything else, and Shizuo doesn’t blame him for a goddam second. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Isn’t that my choice to make, Izaya-kun?”_

“Open wide,” the woman instructs. Her lips are red like overripe strawberries, hair black wire with one or two strands of pale silver – invisible here, of course, because the lighting’s just too dim, but Shizuo’s sure in a distant-not-caring kind of way that he saw them before, when this client first showed up looking for the popular young blonde that she claimed to have been hearing so much about lately.

She was probably more serious about that than Shizuo’d like to believe – ‘cause, like it or not, he’s been getting pretty damn popular these days. He does less and less bartending – hasn’t so much as poured a drink since he showed up here hours ago – and more and more things like this.

And things like this are, as a rule, things like obeying without complaint, lips parted wide to grant easy access to the ball gag and the woman’s fingers intentionally shoved in alongside it – stroking the inside of his mouth, finding sensitive spots and pressing into them just enough that he starts to salivate – and that’s when she pulls away, tightens the thing about his head and smiles as the drool drips past his chin to wet his naked thighs.

He grunts, more humiliated than annoyed and more turned-on than anything else. ‘Course, it helps that his boss forced some weird drug on him earlier, right as he was slipping in through the back door and the yelling and heavy-fisted hurt he’d been waiting for all along – but even with aphrodisiacs still pumping their lazy way through his veins, he’s got no choice but to also blame himself.

These people are monsters, sure, but Shizuo’s no better if he can physically enjoy even the hurt on a good day.

“A masochist,” the woman purrs, and Shizuo glares at her as she laughs slow and soft – trying to sound seductive, maybe, but it’s just another warped method of gaining the upper hand, of making Shizuo feel sub-human and stupid.

“How cute.”

What should have been a growl turns suddenly to a whimper as the woman kneels in front of him, ducks her head low and sinks her teeth into the exposed flesh just left of his balls. It’s not teasing or sweet and it doesn’t feel good – just hurts and hurts and blood and for some reason Shizuo’s cock still throbs wantingly and he moans around the gag in his mouth – so it’s loud and messy and he almost chokes trying to swallow back the drool before it can escape again onto his chin and chest and legs.

“Oh, so you like that, too,” she murmurs, and having so decided she proceeds to dig around in her enormous purse thing – really, it’s big enough to hold at least four spare sets of clothing, plus a wallet and who even knows what else – to eventually come back up with a handful of what basically amount to the tools of sexual torture.

The vibrator, especially, is beyond over-the-top. Maybe it’s just because she’s never had to experience the pain of taking anything that big up the ass – and she definitely wouldn’t care even if she did understand – but it’s hands-down bigger than the dicks of any of the men who’ve come here looking for a good time. Shizuo’s never taken anything like it, which is why he grunts uneasily the moment he lays eyes on it.

Because it’s going to hurt as it forces pleasure in waves and he’ll be left a mess and Izaya will – yeah, he’ll definitely _know_ when he sees…

The clothespins she wastes no time in affixing to his erect nipples – and it hurts, drags a high-pitched groan from deep within his chest as his stomach ties itself in knots and a wave of heat washes over him. His cock twinges and he reflexively angles himself to rut into the hard wood of the floor – only to be caught, of course, by the woman’s hands and the leather ring she then tightens about his member.

He snarls around the gag, even tries to fight her with his hands grasping – but she grabs those, too, and with more strength than she looks like she should have, easily cuffs them behind his back.

 

_“How badly do you want that self-control, Shizuo-kun?”_

_Shizuo stares blankly at Shinra, one hand buried in his right pocket so that he can fiddle with the pack of cigarettes that he is definitely_ not _about to smoke – because he’s been thinking about it a lot lately, the fact that he can’t even manage to get a grip on that craving, let alone the violence, the meaningless anger and all the extra debt piling up to suffocate him._

_He’s been trying to cut back on things like food just to deal with the money problems, but the cigarettes always stay._

_“Well?” Shinra prompts again, and Shizuo glances warily down at himself before gritting his teeth and lighting one of the orange-on-white sticks. The smoke curls about his head, stings his throat – he remembers that he’s starting to get a cold or something, damn annoying but nothing to potentially deter him from things like this – and Shinra gives him a look like he’d like to say something but won’t. Not really because he’s too nice, but because it’s probably too much trouble to have anything in his own apartment destroyed._

_“You makin’ fun of me?”_

_Shinra shakes his head. “I’m offering you an alternative to dealing with the – ah – damages.”_

_Shizuo raises an eyebrow but remains otherwise unresponsive._

_“I can’t promise that it’ll work,” Shinra continues, undeterred, “but there’s this drug – see?” And he holds up a small vial of something that could just as easily be water – clear, maybe a little thicker than normal water but definitely not as impressive as the role Shinra’s trying to assign to it. “It’s still in an experimental phase, but the only way to test it at this point would be to give it directly to you.”_

_“Yeah?” Shizuo muses, reluctant but unconcerned._

_“Yeah,” Shinra echoes. “If you’re really worried about it this time, this is an option.”_

_Shizuo waits._

_“…But?”_

_“Ah,” Shinra realizes, and his smile takes on a regretful hue. “Actually, I should probably admit that this isn’t exactly my idea of a great solution. You could say I got a bit carried away with that blood sample I got from you – don’t look at me like that, Shizuo-kun! You agreed to it and everything, remember?”_

_He doesn’t, of course, but – “If you don’t think it’s a good idea, why even mention it?”_

_“You came here hoping I could help_ somehow, _didn’t you?”_

_Shizuo sighs, shrugs. “Something that’s actually gonna work’d be nice, though.”_

_“That,” Shinra says, emphasizing his words with fingers and hands and circles traced in the air, “I can’t guarantee, but I wouldn’t bring it up if I didn’t at least have some confidence in it.”_

_“So, what? Think it’d be permanent?”_

_“If it works,” the doctor qualifies._

_“Side effects?”_

_“None that I can foresee now.”_

_“Why’s it a bad idea, then?”_

_Shinra gives him a long, hard look before responding. He clearly can’t believe that Shizuo doesn’t get it, that he’s missed a point as obvious as that. And when he says it, Shizuo agrees. Of course he does. It’s not even an opinion – just fact, the inconvenient truth kind that you wish you could just erase along with all the problems it’s tied to._

_He can’t survive without that strength. This is an easy way out, not even real freedom, and it won’t satisfy him the way achieving control all on his own would._

_He tries, anyway, because he’s as stubborn as he is weak._

_He says yes._

Maybe the worst part of the whole thing is that when the woman finally finishes – long after Shizuo’s totally spent, so of course he’s left with nothing to do but swallow his pride and stare blankly up – at her tits, at her glistening face or the mess that is his body and hers on top of and encasing it – well, she’s really quick to leave. She pushes him down and gets away and leaves him just as he is – sticky, too hot and hurting where the handcuffs are biting into his skin and his jaw is being forced to accommodate the bulk of his gag.

That, and the pins that continue to set his nipples throbbing every time he shifts even slightly.

He expects her to at least retrieve those – because anyone as prepared as she was couldn’t possibly have no further use for stuff like this – and the handcuffs, too, they couldn’t have been _free –_

But it apparently doesn’t matter, ‘cause with nothing more than a sideways smirk the woman tidies herself up and then strolls right on out – past Shizuo, handcuffed, gagged and sprawled naked on the floor and – _and,_ he realizes, _already ready for the next one._

Because that was probably a part of the deal from the start.

 

_“So, Shizu-chan,” Izaya coos, “if I told you to jump straight off of this building right now, would you do it?”_

_Shizuo stops mid-throw, steel door – still relatively intact with hinges and a badly dented knob – held high above his head and a frown frozen on his face. He should still look as infuriated as he feels – ‘cause he’s pretty sure he never stops glaring when Izaya’s involved, anyway – but the damn flea somehow picks up on his hesitation regardless._

_“Of course you wouldn’t,” he reasons, and with a lilting smirk easily dodges the newly-airborne projectile._

_“Bastard –!”_

_“You know,” Izaya sighs, totally relaxed with his arms draped lazily about the rail lining the roof, “that may even be what I hate the most about you, Shizu-chan. You’re no good for anything except destroying, yet you still have enough free will to get mad about things like that.” He laughs. “If you were something like a robot or a zombie, I could order you to kill yourself so easily – and that’d be it! I’d never even have to think about you again!”_

_“Be my guest,” Shizuo snarls. “No one’s forcing you to come back again and again.”_

_“Ah, but Shizu-chan,” Izaya teases. “This city needs me to protect it from the likes of you. It’d be a crime for me to stay away.”_

_Shizuo scoffs down at Izaya from several feet away. He’s positively bristling, hands closed to form tight fists as a sudden gust of wind rises to tear through his hair, tugging at his clothes and Izaya’s coat moves the same way. He looks completely unbothered by it, though – even smiles like he’s enjoying the weather and not focusing all that heavily on the man in front of him – so of course Shizuo lets the minor irritation carry him all the way to another fit of rage._

_The bastard came looking for him –_ him! _If he wants a fight, he should at least try caring a little…!_

_“Oops,” Izaya laughs, and dodges as neatly as if Shizuo hadn’t meant to hit him at all. “Shizu-chan, please watch where you’re throwing that,” he adds, grinning as Shizuo’s fist misses him completely again – and then again._

_“Ah –”_

_And then, several swings in and practically shaking with frustration, Shizuo finally gets lucky, manages to land a hit as Izaya’s caught mid-jump with his stomach exposed. The informant crumbles instantly, begins coughing and shuddering in an attempt to draw air past a tight lump in his throat._

_“Ah,” he repeats, eyes pain-clouded and happy, “it’s really been a while…”_

_He cringes again, and Shizuo eyes him suspiciously as he murmurs something about being hit by a truck. ‘S hard to make out the exact words because the flea’s still recovering from the shock of the blow, but Shizuo gets it – Izaya’s in plenty of pain, which is altogether too fair for words._

_He sees his chance and takes it._

_“Free will, huh…”_

_When he kicks Izaya and turns to go, the informant has to draw a quick, sharp breath – just to keep from screaming, Shizuo hopes, and maybe he feels bad for being just a little sadistic, but it’s Izaya – so it’s okay. Better, at least._

_“D-don’t tell me you actually want to leave me just like that, Shizu-chan,” Izaya calls, voice now muffled and nearly drowned out by the dull roar of the wind. Maybe that’s why the sentence barely reaches Shizuo as he nears the gaping entrance to the stairs that will take him back to the ground below._

_Maybe it’s because he’s too mad to care._

_“Yeah,” Shizuo huffs, and he turns to fix Izaya with one last hard glare before starting down the steps._

_“Isn’t that my choice to make, Izaya-kun?”_

 

Maybe he’s lucky that the place is just a little less busy that day – and that night, maybe just because it’s midweek or maybe because things couldn’t possibly get any worse than they already are. Because lying on the floor in the back room all day, variously chained up and forced into positions that hurt more than they feel good – yeah, he’s not sure that it couldn’t have killed him. The in-and-out rhythms and the laughter and humiliation and _they used him like an object – but worse than that is the fact that he feels like one, doesn’t care that he is one_ and the all-consuming rage turns to fear turns to depression turns to nothing.

They let him go early the next morning, but it takes more than the words to get him up and out. His coworker has to shove his clothes at him, his boss lands several blows and when none of that works they threaten him with another round.

Because there’s always someone lookin’ for a good time, they say, but they wouldn’t want him to die – not yet, such a useful toy – so they drag him to his feet and he somehow finds it in himself to stay standing. To get dressed. To stumble his way past rows of empty chairs and spilled drinks to the door and another temporary freedom.

It’s dark outside, and Shizuo is detachedly reminded of the feeling you get leaving a crowded theater to find the same surprise waiting.

_(Where did the sun go?)_

He doesn’t call Izaya, but that isn’t because he’s forgotten. Not once, not even in the midst of blank-minded, fear-heavy moments and silent screaming. Izaya’s some kind of hope, after all, different from this and steeped in thought and cold – so, yes, Shizuo needs him. He needs the hope almost as much as he needs the refuge.

But that’s it. He’s never felt more incapable of sustaining that hope, more sure that there isn’t anything anywhere that could make this better. Erase the bruises, the blood. Let him walk straight with his thoughts in order and maybe a smile. Force him to forget.

He goes straight home, and never once does he hear his cell phone ringing for him to pick up.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _– so he knows now that he’s not crazy, after all, that Shizuo should be glad he’s here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is literally over 4,000 words long. Apologies.

Impatience isn’t just dangerous; it’s stupid, the kind of blunt-minded idiocy that Izaya used to expect from people like Shizu-chan. There’s anticipation, the boredom that precedes momentous occasions and, of course, sleepy afternoons spent waiting for things to happen the way they’re supposed to. But impatience – that goes hand in hand with recklessness, which is more immediately connected to blown cover than anything else in Izaya’s line of work.

And, sure, maybe there’s no cover to be blown in this scenario, anyway – because this is all about being more honest than he’s been in a very long while, too honest – but that doesn’t mean that he should be allowing himself to feel anything but annoyed now.

Frustrated, too, because he’s already lost count of all the calls he’s made to a single number – Shizuo’s, and for no good reason, just a bad feeling and a touch of boredom.

Namie’s not around, of course, and while maybe that’s part of the reason behind the monotony, it’s also a good thing. The screen of Izaya’s phone may not make a particularly great mirror, after all, but he knows without the visual aid that he’s not interested in letting anyone see him looking like he must – worried  – _impatient_ –

– dialing the same number again and again until he gives in and assigns it a place on his speed dial – and keeps going – and still no answer.

When he finally gives up, it’s with a disgusted sigh and the sharp clatter of his phone hitting the table in front of him. He leans way back, narrows his eyes at the ceiling and waits.

And waits.

And when Shizuo still hasn’t worked up the nerve to call Izaya back even ten, fifteen minutes later, the informant storms to his feet and finds his jacket draped over his office chair. Tugs it on, ignores the fabric catching on his fingers in his rush and barely remembers to grab a couple of phones – the one he’s been using to call Shizuo, of course, plus another for work – before striding right past the lit screen of his computer and piles of paper files still waiting to be perused.

Leaves fast, doesn’t give himself time to think, forgets to remember that split-second decisions are rarely – if ever – good ones.

 _Especially_ when they’re made on a shaky foundation of too-strong emotional investment and only vague foreboding.

 

_He’s young, a kid – maybe eight or so, a quiet nonparticipant with almost none of his future propensity for trouble-making. He’s small, doesn’t look capable of doing a lot of damage. Fast, but never quick to run away. Clever, but only enough so to be deemed a “good” student – never enough to really stand out. Never amazing, prodigal, but he, at least, knows that he holds himself back to achieve that._

_So maybe he’s a liar. To the adults in his life – to his peers, even – he’s honest enough._

_(Strange, he sometimes thinks, how little they seem to understand him, each other – themselves.)_

_But, yeah – he’s_ almost _normal,_ almost _harmless – if a little closed-off even now – and that one-word qualifier is the reason he’ll choose, one day, to remember things like this as the slow beginning of the person he’s sure to become._

_(He won’t have to; he could blame his mother, of course, or his father. The house he grew up in. The people around him, the environment. Faulty socialization._

_But that’s no good – like placing his fate in someone else’s hands, giving all the credit to a mere bystander. He’ll be self-made. That’s what he decides, later on – to control, to make it all his. Take what he wants, do what he wants, enjoy. Embrace life itself.)_

_“Izaya-kun,” his teacher prompts again. “We can’t help you unless you tell us what’s going on here.”_

_Izaya blinks once and widens his eyes. It’s the expression he’s supposed to wear in these situations – the innocent, confused, trust-blinded naïve one, get-out-of-trouble and if he can do that, he’s as innocent as they believe him to be._

_“I don’t need help,” he squeaks. “What’d I do, sensei?”_

_The teacher – an older woman, rail-thin and not quite as motherly as she seems to want to be – exchanges a look with the principal. They’re both clearly concerned, more disappointed than uncertain._

_“Ai-chan’s parents called,” one of them explains. “She was crying when she got home last night. She said something about you, but we still don’t know what happened to upset her. Can you tell us something about it, Izaya-kun?”_

_Izaya hesitates, not sure whether it’s safe to trust this. After all, how could anyone be stupid enough to put their ignorance out in the open like that? It must be a trick, a lie; he’s used to that kind of thing, knows well that there are people, grown-ups mostly, who thrive on it._

_He does, too, though, so maybe this small mess-up will wind up benefitting him more than it hurts him, sharpening his own skills and the mask he wears to please them._

_That may not be how he thinks then, of course – at eight years, the reasoning is probably more about returning an eye for an eye, lying to those who lie to him because that’s only fair._

_“I dunno,” he mumbles. “I saw her crying on the way home, but… she didn’t say anything to me…”_

_It’s not even a lie. He was walking near her, headed back to an empty house, himself, and she was crying about how angry her parents were going to be – a failed test or something, no big deal, it hadn’t even been a hard one and she was clearly overreacting – but it bothered him, somehow, and he hurried to pass her with his lips already curved upward into a friendly smile._

_“They’ll leave you all alone,” he’d whispered, and then hurried off down the street without giving the girl – frozen in place on the sidewalk, face sticky with tears and snot – even a second to respond._

Shizuo’s door isn’t locked.

It’s not even closed all the way, actually – half an inch of dirty, scratched-up once-white showing where the bit of (rusted) metal that’s supposed to hold it shut must’ve caught and kept it open. That’s one of two reasons for Izaya’s quick decision to ignore the buzzer where it sits conspicuously off to one side – because none of that’s a good sign, anyway, and then because he’d rather not alert Shizuo to his presence before he absolutely has to.

Ideally, he’ll either get to see the blonde alive and relatively well – better yet, sleeping – before he’s seen, himself – or he’ll find the apartment as cold and empty as it looks from the outside.

Ideally, it will all be nothing more than a false alarm, an isolated moment of wasted time, and Izaya will be able to pretend that none of this ever happened, at all. He’ll go back to his own place and wait patiently for Shizuo’s eventual call and when the blonde wants to know why his number’s all over the caller ID, Izaya will be ready with an excuse.

It’ll be just like he never lost his cool.

He’s sure, somehow, that things aren’t really going to work out that way – but, true to his curious nature, he doesn’t let that hold him back from the other side of his enemy’s threshold. He’s come so far, after all, and he’d never be able to calm down if he didn’t venture so far out of his own comfort zone.

Shizuo’s home is even smaller than Izaya had been expecting. It’s dirty, too, and all over the place are scattered reminders of the damage he’s done to it over the years: holes in the walls, some awkwardly patched and others left to grow deeper and wider, broken coat-hooks and a ripped-off-its-hinges closet door reposing against one still intact.

The man himself is lying in front of the latter mess, shirtless and shivering on the bare tatami. There’s a frayed hole a short distance to the right of his head, but it’s obvious that even this blemish is not new.

He’s facing Izaya, but his eyes are closed and his lips are set in a tight, bloodless line – hurting. He’s covered in bruises, so many that Izaya immediately catches himself reflecting on the dangers of internal bleeding, hemorrhage – everything medical, all the dangers big and small that he’s not nearly enough of an expert to measure on his own. The blonde’s wrists have been rubbed raw in a tell-tale pattern, and it’s obvious based on the way Shizuo’s lying that his back hurts, too. His breathing is erratic, his injured leg twitching every now and then as he whimpers softly in his sleep – and Izaya isn’t sure that he’s really sleeping, at all, that he’s not just resting in a futile effort to avoid the pain.

The distinction between awake and asleep probably doesn’t matter, anyway; regardless, Shizu-chan’s clearly too out of it for a small side of consciousness to make much difference.

Izaya could and should turn around and go right now – never mind a little physical damage, because at least he’s not dying and rest’s probably exactly what he needs for the time being – but the look on Shizuo’s face stops him. It’s pathetic, lonely, desperate – sadder and impossibly more emotionally and mentally wrecked than it’d been even as recently as their last meeting.

That’s why he stops. It’s why he curses himself silently as he lets the thing that is no longer impatience draw him close to Shizuo – and it’s almost a relief, that nearness, like taking things into his own hands, now a problem standing tangible and fixable before him –

– so he knows now that he’s not crazy, after all, that Shizuo should be glad he’s here.

“Shizu-chan…”

The look of distress doesn’t fade from Shizuo’s face. He completely fails to react to the informant’s hushed voice.

Izaya tries again, louder this time, and Shizuo finally twitches, grunts shortly – voice sleep-thick and thoughtless. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter – briefly manages to look almost normal, irritated, ready to ask for five more minutes – and Izaya’s finally convinced that he’s at least been _half-_ unconscious, dozing on and off and in and out for who knows how many hours already.

“Wake up.”

“Wha…?”

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya repeats again.

“I – Izaya,” Shizuo realizes, eyes half-mast, now, and also unfocused. He swallows hard, frowns and crinkles his brow as a slow shiver claws its way up his spine. He opens his mouth as if to speak again, but no sound comes out and he finally has to give up – close it, chapped lips and tears already trembling, full and heavy, at the corners of his eyes.

Izaya raises an eyebrow at him. “Cat got your tongue, Shizu-chan?”

The blonde shakes his head. “G-got the day off,” he manages. His voice is rough, Izaya notices now, and actually his lips aren’t just chapped – they’re split, too, and bleeding slightly where the complete lack of moisture is just that drastic.

Izaya sighs.

“You could at least pretend to be a little excited about that,” he suggests, climbing to his feet and glancing off to one side – at another door, previously positioned beyond his range of vision, with a fist-sized hole still glaring jarringly back at the room’s inhabitants. He hesitates for only a moment before strolling over to it and sliding it back.

The space beyond is a kitchen – small, covered in ugly white tile and cracks – and it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in months. The sink is overflowing with dirty dishes, the counters with stains and the floor with wrappers and a few discarded bandages.

Izaya notices the bandages last – too overwhelmed by everything else, the huge mess and the obvious progression of Shizuo forgetting how to care – but there’s enough blood left dry and brown on the strips of once-white that they inevitably draw his eyes back down. He realizes too late that he’s standing very still in the doorway between one room and the next, eyes wide and mouth set to hide the surprised sound he wants to make.

So it must be obvious to both of them that he’s realized the gravity of the problem, but that doesn’t mean that he has to openly discuss it; he circumvents it, instead, and he does that altogether too clumsily. He pretends not to notice, pretends that everything’s fine and even pretends – daringly – that he and Shizuo don’t have a long history of mutual hatred plus one off night of crazy disregard.

If it _were_ that, of course – crazy _or_ disregard.

“Some of us don’t get much time off, you know…

“Don’t you think it’s a waste, letting all twenty-four hours go by while lying on the floor like that? You’re not even doing anything fun!

“At least do some cleaning or something…”

He finally hears Shizuo grunt a response, then, and there’s the barely-audible rasp of him sliding, dragging himself over and up to sit halfway vertical on the tatami.

“If you were busy…”

“I am,” Izaya interrupts – bluntly, so that it sounds just like he’s blaming Shizuo for this. For his presence here. For the sorry state he’s in, for his helplessness and his failure to call someone – _like me,_ he sulks, _he could’ve at least woken up to call_ me _back_ – to fix things for him.

“I’d call – I mean I was going to,” Shizuo stumbles. Izaya’s still standing with his back turned to him, but the anxious, wide eyes are there in the blonde’s tone. “Sorry.”

There’s a long moment of tense silence, and then – “Why are you sorry, Shizu-chan? I came of my own free will.”

Shizuo seems to struggle with that for a moment – a pause during which Izaya finally turns back to see him with his cheeks flushed and breath coming ragged, body splayed against the wall and floor like a thrown-out rag doll – and when he does finally find the words he’s looking for, they’re so quiet that Izaya has to draw himself a step nearer just to make them out.

“Why would you…?”

“I felt like it,” Izaya admits. He tries to sound less cautious, more aloof – so that what he says won’t sound too much like real honesty, like an admission of his earlier panic.

Apparently, though, it doesn’t matter. Shizuo doesn’t read into it, doesn’t think or guess or analyze; he only leans farther back, lets his eyes fall shut and sighs long and deep.

“Oh.”

Izaya hums curiously. He’s not disappointed by the lackluster response, but it’s not what he’d been expecting – even under these circumstances. “Isn’t Shizu-chan surprised to see me here? Aren’t you gonna ask me to leave?”

“Oh,” Shizuo repeats, sounding vaguely surprised this time. “Um – I guess not.”

Izaya comes to the quick conclusion that they’d both be better off changing the subject now.

“How long have you been slacking off here?”

Raw insult flits through Shizuo’s eyes for the briefest of moments before he relaxes back into his near-emotionless shell. “Time’s it now?”

Izaya whips out his phone and holds it for a moment at arm’s length. “Seven, give or take,” he summarizes. “Have you eaten?”

“Should I answer that, or the first question?” Shizuo retorts.

Izaya’s lips quirk up in something like a smile. “Both, Shizu-chan.”

“Twelve hours… maybe. And I haven’t.” Shizuo studies Izaya for another moment before adding, “I really said I’d call. But you came before I could.” He’s not looking for an explanation, but that doesn’t mean that Izaya shouldn’t volunteer one – because it still doesn’t hurt to be on the safe side of negotiating his basically rocky relationship with the blonde.

“I’m not the patient type, and you were taking too long.” It’s little better than a rewording of his earlier justification, but it’ll have to do – and it’s clear that Shizuo’s not about to be picky about what he does and doesn’t accept as truth, anyway. He’s a mess in more senses of the word than are probably supposed to exist in _any_ language.

Shizuo closes his eyes. “Yeah. I – I’m sorry. But I… after that…”

“Should I assume before you finish that sentence that work was hard on you today?” Izaya wonders as he lowers himself to squat in front of Shizuo. He tilts his head, knows he looks apathetic at best and has to work to hold that expressionlessness on his face. He can _smell_ the kind of night Shizu-chan’s had; it’s worked its way into his skin, his hair, his clothes with their slightly torn seams and one missing button. The blonde’s face is dirt-smudged and obviously long-unwashed. When he opens his eyes again, they’re soulless and exhausted.

He laughs; the sound is harsh, dry. “Didn’t work, anyway. Just had to let” – he swallows hard and chokes back a stream of bile – “you know. The whole time.”

“Ah.”

That’s it. That’s all he can really say.

“Are you staying?”

Izaya considers briefly. “Do you want me to stay?”

“I – I was asking you.”

“It’s a yes or no question, Shizu-chan. Even you should be able to answer something that simple.”

Shizuo’s eyes widen fractionally. “I don’t care.”

“Fine,” Izaya retorts, “then I’m going.” He starts to climb to his feet, but he doesn’t get very far before Shizuo twitches uncomfortably and makes an uneasy throat-clearing noise. “Yes?”

“W-wait. Stay – if that’s okay. Just – Izaya” – he swallows painfully once more – “what I was saying before, about not being able to –”

“I’m not here for sex, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo looks more confused than ever. “Then what?”

“Same as before,” Izaya explains. He leans close so that their clothed chests are almost touching, then pulls slightly back to slip his arms under the blonde’s legs and back. Lifting him awkwardly up and away from the floor, he continues, “I’m helping. Because I feel like it.”

 

_“Because it’s fun.”_

_As a kid, that’s the answer he can expect to hear from most of his peers whenever he bothers to ask them why they do what they do –_ anything _they do, everything. He usually earns himself a few estranged looks, loud complaints that he asks strange questions and bemused giggles, but he’s not a lot less popular for it._

_He accepts the answer as a thing with little more than face value. Humans judge themselves subjectively, others cruelly. There aren’t enough people out there who can be as objective as Izaya – and Izaya has his preferences, too, because, after all – he does it all for fun, same as them._

_“Because I have to.”_

_That’s the transitional phase from childhood to early adolescence. Duty is the cover under which they all hide in a completely arbitrary attempt at seeming responsible, adult, mature. Izaya can read between the lines and he knows that the characters spell idiocy, but it’s all the same, anyway; he accepts it as the norm and adopts it for himself. He fills roles with things that_ have _to be done, but he holds on to all the fun things at the same time._

_The others do almost the same thing, but for Izaya it’s just a little different. What he enjoys, he unabashedly makes the centerpiece of his self-identity._

_“Because I want to.”_

_When the hard and boring things grow in necessity, his peers all hide their inability to rebel by calling it happiness, acting content, grinning laughing and loving limits. The fun things are still there and they complain whenever they can work up the nerve to do it, but the grievances are small ones, mostly, and those people rarely speak through action._

_Izaya creates action through speech, but that doesn’t mean that he’s lying when he says the same things they do._

_He’s always made it his job to do as he pleases._

 

Shizuo makes a whining noise in the back of his throat and jerks at the weight being pressed into his bruises. He doesn’t outright complain about being carried around by Izaya, but that’s probably just because he’s only being brought as far as a small couch on the other side of the room.

“Nice furniture,” Izaya soothes when Shizuo winces and starts to look away. “Is it from your brother?”

Shizuo flinches at the mention, first, but in the very next second he’s nodding and looking back at the informant. “Yeah, he – helped me pay for this place, too. I was trying to pay him back before, but it’s” – he pauses, clears his throat – “harder now.”

Izaya doesn’t ask because he already knows; Shizuo probably hasn’t seen his brother even once since ‘before,’ either.

“Where do you keep your clean bandages?”

Shizuo frowns. “Think I’m out… maybe.”

“What – really? Have you _seen_ yourself? You’re a mess!”

“It’ll get better. I still heal fast, anyway…”

Izaya heaves a sigh, takes a seat beside Shizuo and starts to undo what’s left of the front of his uniform. He’s frustrated and he’s not even really bothering to hide that, so he’s probably just a touch rougher than he should be; Shizuo yelps when the informant inadvertently jabs his finger into a sensitive spot. He’s shivering again, too, and he looks about ready to cry.

Cry or scream.

“Relax. There’ll be time for more fun later on; for now, I only plan on fixing what you’re too _pathetic_ to fix yourself.”

Shizuo cringes at the insult, but the look on his face is more apologetic than personally injured.

“Yeah, I – okay. Got it.”

There’s an intermittent silence as Shizuo’s shirts settle around his waist and Izaya checks the condition of his upper body – not good, not even really _bad_ – just depressingly damaged and obviously painful. There’s not much in the way of broken skin, though, and that leaves Izaya with precious little to do. He considers the likelihood of Shizuo at least having some light painkillers lying around, decides that he should at least get Shizuo to drink something –

– and Shizuo is, surprisingly, the one to break Izaya’s worried concentration and the tense silence that’s coagulated between them.

“Promise,” he stammers.

“Certain things are off-limits,” Izaya teases, smile sympathetic, “but what?”

“Not to look.”

“What? I can’t fix what I can’t see,” Izaya dismisses with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t tell me it still bothers you after –”

“Sorry,” Shizuo says quickly, and then again, “Sorry, I just. Today was bad.”

“I know,” Izaya reaffirms. “Come on,” and he tries to retrieve Shizuo’s wrists from behind his back.

The blonde jerks away, shaking his head. “There’re marks.”

“And I’m not judging you for having them,” Izaya argues. “My opinion of Shizu-chan’s already so low that there’d hardly be any point. Now let me see, or I’ll really leave this time.”

“Izaya –”

“Now, Shizu-chan.”

The blonde shakes his head, tears threatening, and then chokes, “Can’t.”

“Don’t you want to get better?”

“How’m I s’posed to do that? Fucking awful place’s gonna kill me before I have the time to –”

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya snaps. He’d rather not label it anger, but he knows implicitly that that’s what it is. “Stop.”

The blonde’s really crying, all-out sobs yet again before his answer comes breath-pierced and ragged and terrified. “Why? You said you were worried about me before, but that’s ‘cause I’m supposed to be somehow useful, right? ‘Cause I’m fun to mess with. And I’m so fucked up, Izaya – I can’t even walk straight – so you can’t touch me, not now –”

“I’ll get you out of this, you know.”

Shizuo’s eyes widen, but his mouth stays shut.

“And I mean really out of this, Shizu-chan; given a little time, I can easily pull the strings to remove you from a job or two, so try trusting me. I’m not so generous that I’d go this far out of my way without at least that much on your part.”

“If that’s all you wanna do, then why –”

 _(Why the visit the bandages the carrying me around and sex to please me looking at me smiling at me_ talking _to me weren’t you supposed to be invisible weren’t you supposed to be aloof?)_

“You think it’s personal, now, don’t you?”

“I – I don’t know. I… might want it to be. Really like that, I mean.” Shizuo reaches up to rub at his eyes with the back of his hand; it’s the first time he’s consciously let Izaya see the rope and handcuff marks cut and burned into his skin. “Between me and you…”

Izaya sighs, laughs – lets his eyes flutter briefly shut.

“Lucky you, then, Shizu-chan…”

It’s just like this idiot to unintentionally understand everything down to the slightest hint of reluctance – the rash stupidity of impatience, peppered over with fumbled lines and the warning signs of emotional intimacy.

Izaya’s not an idiot; he’s learned to know it when he sees it. He’s been steering himself down that path for quite a while already.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He doesn’t even know what he must look like to normal people anymore._

Izaya looks like he wants to leave. He has a smile on his face, but there’s something hard in his eyes that really sorta scares Shizuo; it’s like he’s not even wavering, just forcing himself despite a really definite feeling – that Shizuo’s annoying, maybe, or that he’s too pathetic now to really warrant any of the help Izaya promised before.

“What’s that mean?”

“What?”

“What you just said,” Shizuo repeats, blank-faced. “What’s it s’posed to mean?”

Izaya pauses halfway through rolling up the cuffs of Shizuo’s pants – they’ve been hanging on him recently, anyway – and sighs lightly. The wet-warm gust of breath against the bruised skin of Shizuo’s calves sends a little shiver running up his spine.

“Shizu-chan,” he scolds, “you may not be the brightest, but I’m sure that even you can figure that one out for yourself. Don’t think I’ll repeat it just to amuse you.”

 

“You _introduced me to him,” Shizuo complains, glaring. “What the fuck were you thinking?”_

_Shinra shrugs carelessly. “I told him it went against my better judgment, but that didn’t seem to put him off at all. Izaya-kun tends to be pretty persistent when he wants something, so I figured it’d be easier to just go along with it. No one died, anyway, so I guess it was mostly a win-win kind of thing.”_

_“I was hit by a car,” Shizuo states incredulously. “What part of that’s a win?”_

_“The part where Izaya-kun leaves me alone after getting what he wants. Wouldn’t you have felt sorry for me if he wound up coming by my place every day just to nag me about it? Think of Celty and I, interrupted when we could be –”_

_“I didn’t ask for that much detail, you fucking –”_

_“Shizuo-kun –!”_

_Shizuo promptly – and grudgingly, if only just a little – lets go of Shinra’s hand before he can actually crush it in his grip. He was controlling his power well enough, he thinks, because all Shinra does when he retrieves his hand is hold it to his chest and rub delicately at the bright red marks left there. It’s more or less a friendly warning, though there’s real irritation behind it – of course, because this whole mess with that Orihara Izaya bastard is Shinra’s damn fault, anyway –_

_“That aside – Shizuo-kun.”_

_“Ah?”_

_“I don’t know why that guy wanted to meet you so badly, but I doubt it was just to fight with you. Do your best not to let him provoke you, okay?”_

_“Of course, I” – he hesitates for a moment before reconsidering – “I don’t think that’s gonna be possible. Unless he decides to keep his ugly face far away from me.”_

_Shinra shakes his head. “That’s not gonna happen, you know. I can’t imagine Izaya-kun giving up on anything that easily.”_

_“Don’t care,” Shizuo grumbles. “I’ll just beat the shit out of him again and again until he does.”_

_Laughing softly, Shinra adds, “You saw how fast he is, though, didn’t you? It’s not likely to be that easy for either of you to gain a real advantage.”_

_“So why’s the bastard even bother, then?!”_

_Light shrug. “He’s interested, I guess. Maybe he doesn’t know, himself, yet. Izaya-kun’s been like that for as long as I’ve known him.”_

_“Well,” Shizuo huffs, “I hate it.”_

Shizuo lets his mind go numb behind a thrumming curtain of doubt and exhaustion. He can’t bring himself to contemplate even the near future, but that’s alright, too; Izaya’s fingers are so cold that they feel damp, light and quick and occasionally sharp pain – Shizuo grunts softly at every tender application of pressure to his legs, lets waves of fear-almost-panic override the numbness, gives himself up to a flood of images of how it happened, how it felt and feels and how he thinks, now, that those bruises really won’t ever go away.

“The boredom’s killing me, Shizu-chan. You really are creepy when you don’t talk.”

“You’re the one petting my leg,” Shizuo retorts, drowsiness aggravating all that raw emotion and irritation. “It should be fucking obvious – the really dark ones hurt the worst. You don’t have to touch every single one of ‘em.”

Izaya pouts at him. “I know what I’m doing.”

 _“Hurting_ me?”

“Is it really that bad?”

“No,” Shizuo snaps, “but if you’re supposed to be busy, you might as well get lost. You don’t even want to be here –”

“I said –”

“To _fuck_ me?” Shizuo spits. “‘S that why you look so fucking disappointed?”

“Shizu-chan!”

The informant’s suddenly on his feet, staring angrily down at Shizuo with his hands balled at his sides. Shizuo cringes, suddenly nauseous, and closes his eyes – turns his head away, shrinks back – “Sorry, sorry – don’t yell…”

“You were just yelling,” Izaya mutters irritably, but there’s something melancholic in his voice when he adds, “but that’s pretty rare for you, now, isn’t it? At least it’s not nearly as weird as sitting here in silence.” He settles back in, waits patiently for Shizuo to open his eyes and look. “Don’t tell me Shizu-chan’s one of those types?”

“What type?”

“You wind up in a bad mood when you’re hungry, don’t you? You’re really simple, after all, so it makes sense.”

Shizuo’s emotions stutter to a halt. It’s all he can do to stare at Izaya, blank and tired and confused. “I – what?”

Izaya sighs, presses his palm to Shizuo’s forehead – not for any reason that Shizuo can decipher – and smiles for the blonde to see. “Think you can stay alive long enough for me to get back with something? You said you hadn’t eaten in a while, right?”

“But I” – he swallows thickly – “I was just – you’re not mad…?”

“You’re better off like that,” Izaya decides after a moment. “Temper tantrums are just like the old Shizu-chan. Plus a bit more belligerence, but it was close.”

Shizuo squirms and stares at his hands. “Is that what you want? Me to fight you?”

“You’d lose,” Izaya chuckles, and Shizuo reddens despite himself.

“With words,” he mutters, annoyed.

“You’d still lose,” Izaya laughs – more loudly this time and with his hands suddenly on Shizuo’s in his lap. His eyes are bright, unthreatening, not bored or underwhelmed but satisfied. “I just want there to be some fight left in you,” he explains. “It doesn’t have to be directed at me, but let’s just say that I don’t particularly mind if it is.”

Because he’s not a threat, maybe. And maybe Izaya gets a kick out of seeing Shizuo all fruitlessly riled up. Maybe it satisfies the part of him – if and only if it’s really just a part and not all of him buried somewhere deep – that still hates Shizuo, the part that laughs at tormenting him, teasing and taunting.

Seems like Izaya notices something in Shizuo’s expression, then, because he sighs and leans in for a kiss. Shizuo expects him to leave it on his cheek or maybe his forehead, but he bypasses both and pauses centimeters away from Shizuo – face to face, lips and eyes and hot breath all aligned. His eyes are open, searching – for permission, Shizuo realizes after a long pause.

He scrambles to find his voice. “Y-yeah – you – you can…”

Izaya doesn’t wait for more; his eyes slip closed and he smiles as he brushes their lips together. Shizuo’s are chapped, but Izaya doesn’t seem to mind. He breaks away once and then comes back to touch again – longer this time, a little lingering – and then, again, he moves back to where he was before.

Shizuo’s chest feels impossibly light.

“I keep telling you to trust me.”

“I don’t get you,” Shizuo whispers. “You’re so… out of nowhere – from the very start.” Izaya’s too-attentive gaze is starting to get to him; it should be about time to look away, now – down at his lap where his and Izaya’s hands are – or, better, at the floor to his right – but he can’t do it.

He can’t break away.

“Actually, I put a lot of thought into how I’d approach you,” Izaya murmurs, and this smile is just another, different one – slight, confident. “And even more time and effort into just finding you, first – plus a bit of tact in approaching that friendly little workplace of yours when I did finally manage to track it down.” He raises an eyebrow pointedly so that it’s like he’s wondering again how stupid Shizuo had to’ve been – falling into a place like that, mindlessly believing it was trustworthy or that he could somehow handle it.

“Didn’t have a lot of tact when you barged in on – you know,” Shizuo mutters.

“I like to make an entrance,” Izaya says almost proudly. “At least I had the grace to wait outside for you after that.”

“Grace,” Shizuo scoffs.

Izaya smirks and finally pulls more completely away, but his hands still don’t leave Shizuo’s lap; the blonde hadn’t even noticed his hands shaking, but Izaya, apparently, has. He keeps holding on, maybe hoping that they’ll go still, even as he lowers himself to the couch beside Shizuo.

They sit close, but not quite close enough to touch anywhere else.

“Well,” Izaya says slyly, “I didn’t know what to expect, either. I never would have guessed that Shizu-chan could be so thorough about hiding his emotions from everyone around him. Maybe Shinra’s drug got you thinking about consequences a little more, ne?”

Shizuo shrugs. “I just don’t wanna make this anyone else’s problem. It wouldn’t be fair to let Shinra blame himself.” He frowns. “You didn’t…?”

“Tact,” Izaya reminds him. “I didn’t feel like being that direct, and I doubt Shinra would’ve told me anything even if I _had_ tried to talk to him about you. I did ask his headless girlfriend and Ryuugamine Mikado-kun, but I didn’t volunteer any information of my own. So don’t worry,” he concludes, “your secret’s safe from at least two people.”

Shizuo doesn’t have the heart to tell him that they’re probably close to figuring it out – kind of, anyway – with or without Izaya’s interference.

“Still,” Izaya continues, “none of my contacts knew anything about you. It was circumstantial stuff, mostly.”

“So – what? Thought I’d go on a rampage or something? Is that what you were hoping to find?”

“After a while, no. I thought you were sick or something. You looked sick.”

“You were watching me?”

“Of course,” Izaya says, and he says it like it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

Shizuo shudders. “Then you knew what you’d find.”

“I guessed.”

“Then –”

“I wanted to get you mad, Shizu-chan.”

“I – I was _humiliated,”_ Shizuo chokes, incredulous. “You were the last person I would’ve wanted to tell –”

“But not because you want to protect _me,_ right?” Izaya says with another cocky grin. “Now we’re more or less on the same page, and I’m sure you’ve never worried about me personally, anyway. So I guess that makes Orihara Izaya a pretty special guy, after all, right?”

Shizuo feels his face go hot. “There’s way more to it than that.”

Izaya hums inquisitively and rolls to his feet. His hands are briefly torn from Shizuo’s – he was holding them, holding him back, when did he start doing that? – but he turns back quickly and offers one of them to the blonde again.

“You can tell me all about that over lunch, then, but how about a bath to start with? You really smell awful, Shizu-chan.”

“Tch. Same to you…”

 

_“You just need to remember to take a second to think things through, okay?”_

_Shizuo glances warily up at his father. His hands curl into fists in his lap, but he’s not mad – scared and embarrassed and very, very sorry, maybe, but not mad; he wouldn’t dare. “Mm…”_

_“I know it’s tempting when no one in your class is as strong as you. You might feel like taking things out on them from time to time, but remember that it doesn’t only affect you, alright?” His father smiles charmingly down at him. His brown eyes are almost startlingly gentle, good-natured – he’s not a bad person, after all, he just doesn’t understand it right – and his hand in Shizuo’s hair would be soothing if he weren’t so wrapped up in his own thoughts. “You’re a good kid, Shizuo.”_

_Shizuo doesn’t think so. He wishes he were calmer, smarter – even just at school and studying – or, better, he wishes that he_ could _consider the consequences. That he really was tempted or intrigued by his strength and not just plain afraid of it – the pain of the bones he’s broken three different times already, the way his classmates look at him like he’s some kind of freak – and, worst of all, the fact that he can’t stop thinking that he really is._

_“D-did they figure anything out?” he wonders hopefully._

_His mother interjects, then, looks sad and runs her own hand through Shizuo’s hair; it’s the same color as her own, an unexceptional brown. “The doctors have never seen anything like it,” she says. “I’m sure they’ll tell us if they can come up with a solution” – a cure, she means, a way to make their son normal again – “but until then, we’ll just have to make the best of it – okay?”_

_Shizuo nods somberly. He doesn’t know how to make the best of it, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his parents again so soon after the last time._

_“I’ll be okay,” he swears. “Sorry.”_

 

Shizuo’s bathroom is cramped, but he’s been especially glad lately that he’s even got one. Dragging himself through the motions of washing himself clean is bad enough as it is without the curious stares and whispered judgments of the people a public bath’d have.

And who wouldn’t wanna talk – a bedraggled, bruised-and-constantly-bleeding guy like Shizuo? He doesn’t even know what he must look like to normal people anymore. He sometimes wonders if the ones he passes on the street have any idea who he is.

He keeps finding sticky patches – even in places they shouldn’t be, places he doesn’t remember getting dirty. The bruises hurt, and the spots on his wrists and elsewhere – the ones that’ve been badly chaffed and cut into by ropes and handcuffs – sting every time he slips and gets water on them.

He tries hard not to look, and when he has to touch – his chest and throat constrict, his eyes burn and he struggles to breathe. Shame wells up and nearly chokes him.

So that’s why he refused to let Izaya help him. The flea didn’t press the issue, just nodded and smiled through a perfect poker face, but Shizuo imagines him getting impatient in the other room now that he’s actually left Shizuo alone. It’s not as though the miscellaneous pills and razor blades for shaving don’t tempt him, after all – he wonders if that bothers Izaya, wonders what he’d do if he – but he won’t. He decided weeks ago that he definitely wouldn’t try anything that dumb – ‘cause the thought of it still disgusts him, it’s selfish, his stomach flips over every time he imagines anyone finding him like that –

“Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo stifles a gasp and turns to face the shut door and Izaya’s muffled voice. “I – I need a little longer,” he rasps.

“Fine,” Izaya says after a moment. He sounds ready to add something, but in the end Shizuo hears a short sigh and his footsteps retreating a bit – and then nothing.

Fair enough. What is there to say? They both know how Shizuo feels, covered in all this and more – the memory, the trauma of it. They both know how much he hates – how much he has to hate – the simple act of looking at his own body, living in it, touching. How dirty he feels, doesn’t matter how much he scrubs at the bites and the marks in his skin.

It takes a long time and a lot of careful sidestepping, smothered and sharp intakes of breath at every slight jostling – but he does finish.

He ties a towel around his waist and stumbles to the door. Cracks it open just enough to see and peers out.

“I – I forgot to –”

“Here,” Izaya says. He pulls the door open just a little wider and smiles up at a startled Shizuo. There’s a neat pile of apparently clean clothes stacked in the informant’s open hand; Shizuo recognizes one of his favorite pairs of sweats, an old T-shirt that he almost never wears. A worn jacket. Socks – even underwear, which embarrasses him enough on its own to probably throw a healthy blush into the dead-looking pale of Shizuo’s face.

“I-isn’t this too casual…?”

He realizes mere seconds – and too many – later just what, exactly, he’s implying.

“Don’t worry, Shizu-chan,” Izaya laughs. “As long as your date’s okay with it.”

 

_“Didn’t that get to you at all?” Tom wonders on their way out of another club – funny how many of those they wind up looking through every day._

_Shizuo shrugs. There’ve been a few women here and there who’ve tried stuff like that – flirting, getting too close and touching him – but the effect’s never much more than surprise that they can stand to do that despite his reputation. It’s not like he’s convinced himself that he’s not attractive – he’s at least good enough to’ve attracted one scouting agent without any real effort on his part – but that’s just his face. There’s nothing cute or sexy or anything about throwing street signs and guard rails – and people, sometimes._

_“She wasn’t serious,” he mutters._

_“You sure?”_

_Shizuo doesn’t answer. He’s practically given up on stuff like that, romantic stuff. He’s never had any luck with it, and he’s never had enough confidence to try, anyway. Too afraid he’d screw up and hurt anyone who got close – which is fuckin’ predictable, yeah, but also justified._

_He can feel Tom staring curiously up at him for another moment before he, too, shrugs and goes quiet._

_It’s not like he doesn’t want to get close to people, Shizuo thinks sulkily. He just – can’t._

_It wouldn’t work._

 

“What are you thinking about?”

Shizuo’s gaze flickers up from his barely-touched food to Izaya’s face.

“Oh. Nothing, just – guess I don’t know what to do in this kinda situation,” Shizuo mutters semi-apologetically.

Izaya chuckles and leans back a little to down a quarter of his glass – water, Shizuo assumes, but it could just as easily be something else. “It’s not complicated, Shizu-chan. Try eating to start with.”

Shizuo nods and glances again at his plateful of sushi. It’s good stuff, courtesy of Izaya, so it’s not like Shizuo wouldn’t like it if he could only stomach the idea of any food at all.

“…I guess I’m also – I haven’t tried being out like this in” – he tries to swallow, but his throat’s too dry – “in a while.”

“You mean out in public?” When Shizuo doesn’t answer, Izaya’s smile wavers. “Ah. Would you have preferred someplace less crowded?”

“I don’t think that matters…” He comes home every day, anyway, but that’s with his head down and late – late (or early, sometimes) enough that most passersby assume he’s only drunk and leave him alone.

Izaya sighs. Shizuo tries not to let that bother him, but he can’t help sitting there wondering if he’s just fucked up really bad, after all – and it’s been uncomfortable, but if he’d been alone – alone, he probably wouldn’t’ve even made it into the shower. Or off the floor. Or anything, really. Anything short of waiting to starve to death there in his own apartment.

Izaya rises to his feet.

“I-Izaya, wai –”

The informant shushes him gently and slips into the booth on Shizuo’s side. There’s an awkward moment of close contact between the two of them before Shizuo can decide to make room by sliding closer to the window.

“What are you doing?” he stammers. “Your food –”

“You’re the one who hasn’t eaten in at least a day,” Izaya counters with a skeptical look at Shizuo. “I’m fine. You can even have the rest of what I ordered. And I’m right here, so can’t we agree that you’re safe enough not to worry too much more about the other people here?”

The other people. There aren’t any, really. It’s still pretty early for lunch, still late for breakfast. Still cold outside, not enough sun in the sky. Shizuo shivers and curls his toes in his thick socks and stupid-looking boots. His hands go to his upper arms, and he bows his head slightly. “Thanks. I know you probably think I’m being a pain.”

Izaya shrugs and scoots closer to Shizuo. “You can’t help it.”

Shizuo laughs just a little. He picks up his chopsticks again and takes a bite. Chews. Swallows.

“…It’s good.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shizuo won’t say anything, but it’s there in his face – his eyes clouded, wet cheeks flushed somehow darker than they probably should be._

Simon comes to check on the pair just a few minutes after leaving them alone at their out-of-the-way table. (There’d been precious little surprise in his expression, then – the seeing Izaya and Shizu-chan together, the cogs turning fast and the realizing that there didn’t seem to be any trick to their awkward brand of date.

He’d complemented them rather enthusiastically, actually. He always did like to see everyone getting along.)

“Simon,” Izaya addresses the sushi chef coolly before he can come close enough to enter Shizuo’s line of sight.

He feels the blonde tense uneasily at his side.

Simon returns the greeting with Izaya’s own name. He places the same awkward stress on the middle syllable as he does when he’s speaking to Shizuo. “The sushi is good? And you are both making peace, yes?”

Izaya grins amiably and nods. “Shizu-chan and I have gotten a lot closer recently,” he chirps, and to illustrate his point he leans in close to Shizuo’s side, rests his head on his shoulder and offers up a gentler, only half-mocking smile – as though he were posing for a picture together with the blonde.

“Izaya,” Shizuo complains quietly. He shrugs to get the informant off of him; Izaya complies with a tiny pout.

Simon looks to be on the verge of frowning, then, but the return of Izaya’s attention to him quickly prompts another friendly look. “Good, good!” he agrees almost absently. “And Shi-zu-o, you are happy, too?”

Shizuo doesn’t look up from the table, but the bright red staining his cheeks apparently isn’t enough to deter a quick nod. “Been better,” he mumbles after a moment.

“Better?”

He shrugs. “Y’know…”

Izaya’s positive that Simon _doesn’t_ know, but that doesn’t seem to bother the man. He waits for Shizuo to glance guardedly up at him before nodding and offering to bring them both some drinks.

“Water for me,” Izaya says. “Shizu-chan?”

The blonde stiffens again and fidgets about with an awkwardness that is almost physically painful to watch.

Finally, he says, “Something with alcohol. And cheap,” he adds, glancing questioningly back at Izaya. “Even beer’s okay.”

“Thought you hated beer?” Izaya muses as Simon wanders off; there’s an air of mild anxiety following him every step of the way.

“I do,” Shizuo mutters. “I just – I haven’t been by here since… before. Hate being around people who knew me.”

“They still know you,” Izaya points out.

“Not now…”

Izaya rolls his eyes. “You’re still Shizu-chan,” he insists, “whether you choose to drown your nerves in alcohol or not.”

“You don’t have to say it like I’m a fucking addict!” Shizuo hisses back.

The informant chuckles but doesn’t bother coming up with a response. Simon comes and goes with the water and some amber-tinted, probably-beer thing for Shizu-chan – shoots Shizuo a sidelong glance but is otherwise quick to move on – and that’s the perfect opportunity for Izaya to distract himself by downing most of his drink in just a few swallows. He can still see enough of Shizuo from the corners of his eyes to notice the blonde examining the glass suspiciously.

“Would you have preferred water?” he teases.

“Shut up,” Shizuo mutters. “I just don’t like the way it tastes, is all.”

Izaya would laugh again if he didn’t feel just a little sorry for Shizuo. “You’re not helping yourself like that, you know.”

Shizuo pointedly ignores him, takes a drink and fails miserably at hiding a slight cringe.

Not that Izaya wholly blames him; he’s not much of a drinker, himself, but that’s less because of the taste and more because he’s wary of the dangers posed by inebriation. For Izaya, it’s just smarter to take it easy. For Shizuo, it might be just the opposite.

 

_So this is what he’s thinking, not that he’ll end it but that he’ll test it, its limits, its boundaries. Not that he’ll threaten it, but that he will stretch it, tear at it and poke and prod – to ensure that it won’t break on its own, sometime much later and at someone else’s hands._

_Problems like the ones he’s created for himself are messy and dangerous to a point, but that in itself is what makes them so very_ interesting _– and, after all, he doesn’t often get the chance to investigate these things._

_(Things like love, that bond.)_

_Besides –_

_Besides, what Shizuo needs is exactly that – a push._

_The door to Russia Sushi swings shut behind them. Izaya smiles, he takes Shizuo’s hand, he leads him ahead of Simon and they sit down together at a table, an island of quiet and isolation._

_And he ponders just how to do it without reducing it to anything as final as a killing blow._

 

 “You said you put a lot of thought into meeting me that time,” Shizuo mumbles, “but don’t you just do this stuff on a whim, anyway?”

Izaya twirls on his heel and the chilled pavement to look Shizuo up and down. There’s color in his cheeks, at least – courtesy of the food and maybe of that single beer, Izaya guesses – and he’s walking more steadily on both feet (more or less) without help.

“I’m always thinking,” Izaya says simply.

“Y’mean you’re always plotting shit,” Shizuo scoffs, but he’s quick to change his tune. “I don’t believe you. I used to think I could tell when you were up to something.”

“Think so now?”

“No,” Shizuo says sharply, coolly. “But I got the opposite feeling today when you showed up out of nowhere. Like you didn’t have any plan at all. So I don’t believe you,” he concludes, “and I guess… I just wanna hear why. Straight from you.”

“Because I have a crush on you, too, Shizu-chan!”

He laughs and Shizuo’s eyes widen just a bit too much.

“Y-yeah,” he chokes. “Uh – ‘s kinda hard to take seriously, coming from you. But – something like that? Maybe?” He sounds hopeful, can’t meet Izaya’s gaze with his own.

Izaya’s grin widens. “Something like that,” he agrees.

As if he hadn’t already said it in his own way more times than he cares to count.

 

_“What?”_

_Izaya shrugs. “You heard me.”_

_The girl wavers for a moment with her eyes shadowed behind long bangs. She’s trembling visibly, hands clenching and unclenching mouth drawn into a tight line and shoulders stooped. She looks ready to cry, any time now – but she doesn’t, not when Izaya leans a little closer with a mocking smirk set triumphantly into the curve of his lips._

_She straightens up and glares at him. She forms fists with her hands and lowers just one to her side._

_The other she brandishes like a weapon, poised to hurt._

_“I didn’t think they were right about you, Orihara-kun…”_

_“Oh? Who are ‘they?’ Anyone I know?”_

_“Everyone,” she hisses. “My friends, the other girls in our class. Yuuka, too.”_

_“Ah, the one from before,” Izaya muses. She hadn’t much cared for the way he looked at other girls – very openly, of course – and the guys he flirted with, too, that had bothered her almost more. For no good reason that Izaya can see his way to justify, but he won’t deny that loyalty matters a lot to most people._

_Should it, though? In their position, he’s sure he wouldn’t care either way._

_“You’re not worth as much as you think you are,” the girl in front of him all but snarls. “Act like that for the rest of your life and see where it gets you!”_

_She turns on her heels and stalks off, both fists now balled at her sides, hair bouncing bound in a pretty little ribbon. Izaya shrugs again and smirks cheerily after her – because there’s something to be said for the satisfaction of predicting a person’s reaction with so much accuracy – and it amuses him, the way they all stretch their values in an attempt to make them fit him._

_Alone or wrapped up in something short-term and weak – does it matter? Should it?_

_Izaya doesn’t think so._

 

They stop for groceries – medicine, mostly, but Izaya insists on a few food items, too – and that doesn’t bother Shizuo half as much as the cleaning supplies do. He eyes them with the same kind of disdain as the beer inspired before, but Izaya doesn’t let that attitude dissuade him any; he collects plenty, small piles of bleach and glass cleaners with rubber gloves and sponges.

“What’s that for?” Shizuo grumbles as the last heavy-duty chemical makes its way into the cramped space of their shared basket.

“Your kitchen’s a mess, Shizu-chan. I’d hate to see what the bathroom looks like.”

Shizuo looks like he wants to argue, but he gives up quietly after taking a long look at Izaya’s carefree, never-back-down grin; he settles for sulking his way through the checkout and the remainder of their return trip to his apartment.

That combined with his messy hair, baggy clothes and boots makes him look more than a little ridiculous, but he makes up for that with an awkward blush as they slow to a stop outside his door – makes him look cute, Izaya lets himself notice.

“L-listen,” he begins, “I actually – I just thought I should apologize.”

“For what?” Izaya wonders, and Shizuo fumbles with the key for a moment before turning it in the lock.

“For asking so many questions, I guess.”

“I never did take you for the naturally inquisitive type, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo shakes that off without complaint. “I meant to thank you more than just one time earlier. And I wasn’t trying to act like a jerk – much,” he allows. “I’m not that mad, or anything.”

Izaya crosses his arms on his chest after he finishes removing his shoes by the door. Shizuo takes longer doing it, but when he straightens up, Izaya’s still standing there waiting for him.

“I’m not as sensitive as you are, evidently.”

Shizuo looks taken aback. “I’m just trying to act a little polite.”

“You don’t have to,” Izaya says, and he turns to carry their – Shizuo’s, though, just Shizuo’s – bags into the kitchen. He leaves them on the counter before turning to inspect the room from corner to corner to corner. It’s not as bad the second time around, not bad at all – manageable. He might’ve even bought too much, but that just means that he can expect Shizuo to keep things clean later, too…

“If that’s the case,” Shizuo says from the doorway, “then can I ask you for something?”

There’s a new note in his voice, now. Izaya turns to face the blonde and his shy brown eyes, downturned. His good foot scuffling nervously at the ground in front of him, plenty of weight heavy against the frame of the door and Shizuo’s cheeks flushed pink all over again. “This is stupid,” he mutters under his breath.

“What is?”

Shizuo glances up and then quickly back down. “I said I didn’t want – what we did before. But –”

“You’re asking if we can have sex, Shizu-chan?” Izaya’s a bit amused, honestly, but he’s also startled and just a little frustrated – because he’s not at all sure where this is coming from, why Shizuo suddenly feels like asking for something that seemed to scare him so much just a few hours ago.

“Yeah,” Shizuo says quickly. “Nothing special. It’s fine if you’d rather – you know, ‘cause you said you were busy, and it’s already been a while since you showed up. And the groceries –”

“You’ll never get anywhere if all you can do when asking for favors is list all the reasons why it’s not worth doing,” Izaya says quietly. “Shizu-chan.”

“M-mm?”

“You sure?”

Shizuo nods, bites his lips.

“I need something,” he tries, and then cuts himself short. “I – I want to –”

“I get it,” Izaya picks up for him. “It’ll feel good.”

 

_“You don’t trust me, do you? I’m hurt.”_

_Shiki grins and shrugs nonchalantly. His back is half-turned to the informant, and his hand is resting already on the knob of the door to Izaya’s apartment – to the hallway outside. Ready to leave, cool and composed. He turns back just enough that if Izaya weren’t watching him closely, he’d assume they were facing each other at a perfect parallel._

_But he_ is _looking and he can read Shiki’s always-subtle body language; he’s as busy as ever and hardly eager to waste time here._

_“You seem more and more like the type who could just as easily throw everything away at the last moment.”_

_Izaya smirks, rests his chin on his interlaced fingers and narrows his eyes. “And what does that mean, Shiki-san?”_

_“Nothing whatsoever,” the man chuckles. “Just bear it in mind. We pay you because we believe in your ability and inclination to get the job done. I’m asking you to carry out just a bit of manipulation; I’d advise that you work to maintain our mutual trust.”_

_“I wouldn’t dream of violating Shiki-san’s confidence,” Izaya chirps._

_The door closes heavily behind the yakuza – and that’s his only response._

_He wouldn’t dream of it, of course he wouldn’t – but that doesn’t mean that he can’t have his own fun on the side. If that puts a bit of a strain on the task at hand, it won’t matter in the end; Izaya’s not suicidal and he’s no fool. He only plays with fire when he’s sure that the bucket at his side is full to the brim with water, cold and ready._

_He’s good at it._

 

Shizuo’s back arches on the second thrust, and in his groan is something that’s not completely pain and not completely pleasure.

Some of it might be fear, Izaya thinks. Some of it might be stifled cries and hidden bruises. Shizuo won’t say anything, but it’s there in his face – his eyes clouded, wet cheeks flushed somehow darker than they probably should be.

Izaya swallows back his own moan to kiss Shizuo long and hard. “Okay? We don’t have to do it like this, you know.”

“‘M fine,” Shizuo pants. “S-still tired.” His brown eyes scan the curve of Izaya’s body, linger briefly where they both meet still trembling and hot – and he moans softly, near-breathless. “Don’t – don’t stop.”

Izaya laughs as he moves, a slow press forward so that Shizuo shivers and his breath catches repeatedly in his throat. He looks like he’s trying to say something, but nothing makes it past his lips – just quick, short breaths and incoherent noises. Izaya’s as close as Shizuo is, but he’s better at maintaining that semblance of control. He can still talk and tease and touch every quivering spot of sensitive skin with a clear purpose – to see Shizuo jerk and thrust and moan, drooling, eyes squeezed shut, chest heaving.

He loves that sight. He’s missed it almost more than he’s missed any other part of Shizuo – and it hasn’t been long, but it’s funny, the wanting to meet the man who was once such a threat to his safety – and this, the way Shizuo, unbeatable, powerful, stubborn Shizuo, falls apart, is the most incredibly honest part of him.

And that’s funny, too – that Orihara Izaya cares anything for that honesty when he himself doesn’t offer it to anyone – not most of the time, anyway.

He wonders just how far he’ll have to stretch his own honesty to attain the desired effect –

– to drive this little experiment of his, to drive Shizuo – somewhere new –

– and he wonders why he hopes that they’ll make it back here before the ride’s finished.


End file.
